


Other People

by Superstition_hockey



Series: Superstition [11]
Category: Hockey Original Work, Original Work
Genre: Accidental Vegas Marriage, Best Friends, Bromance to Romance, Codependent Bros for Life, Coming Out, Coming of Age, Discussion of queer slurs, Found Family, Friends to Lovers, Guest cameo - Dicky Clune's thighs, Hockey, Hockey superstitions, Jacks' POV, Luc's food issues, Pining, Queer Coming of Age, Recreational drug use - marijuana, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 09:39:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10739070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Superstition_hockey/pseuds/Superstition_hockey
Summary: “Hi,” the other kid said from where he was lying underneath Jacks, grinning up at him behind his face mask, “sick snapshot!”“Hi.” Jacks grinned back.In retrospect, it didn’t seem, at the time, like all that fateful of a moment. It hadn’t felt to Jacks, then, like the rest of his life suddenly clicked into place, even though it’s hard, now, not to think of it as the moment where it did.





	1. Moncton

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is, Jacks POV for Superstition - so this runs from Mite to Vegas.
> 
> Many thanks to Dangercupcake who proof read this for me and to Raven who helped with the French!

**Mite**

 

Jacks cried for three weeks straight at the end of the summer when they moved to New Brunswick.  He cried about a lot of things, like his parents divorcing, and having to leave his old friends and his old school.  But mostly, selfishly, the thing he didn’t want to tell anyone, was that he cried because his mom sat him down and told him that he might not be able to keep playing hockey now that they’re on their own.  

“I’m going to try as hard as I can, baby,” she said. “We’re going to try to keep you in, but with my schedule, and rink and team fees, I just don’t know, baby, but we’ll try.”  

 

On the first day of practice, at the start of the school year, Jacks was nervous, and anxious and shy around all the kids he didn’t know.  They did a bunch of drills and then at the end, Coach divided them all up for a scrimmage, put Jacks on the line with a dark-haired kid his same age, with laughing brown eyes and a soft French accent.  They tumbled over the gate together when the lines changed and the kid stole the puck from the other team in a flash. He had guys on all sides of him, but managed to keep the puck away until he saw Jacks, shouted at him and sent the puck straight to his tape, and Jacks sent it straight to the back of the net.  They crashed into each other in a hugging-celly, joined quickly by all the other boys on their line, and wobbled over into a pile in the net.   

“Hi,” the other kid said from where he was lying underneath Jacks, grinning up at him behind his facemask, “sick snapshot!”

“Hi.” Jacks grinned back.  

In retrospect, it didn’t seem, at the time, like all that fateful of a moment. It hadn’t felt to Jacks, then, like the rest of his life suddenly clicked into place, even though it’s hard, now, not to think of it as the moment where it did.

 

 

 **Atom**  

 

Jesse Buechner calls him a faggot six minutes into the third period of their first game against the Huskies, and it isn’t the first time he’s ever heard the word, but it is the first time it’s ever been directed at him and it burns, twists something in his stomach and makes his chest ache.  And all Jacks can think about is, how did he _know?_ How could he tell, when Jacks doesn’t even know himself?  And Luc is so close by, he’s probably heard and now… what if he…

 

Luc gets thrown into the penalty box, snarling and livid in a way he never is off-ice, but is unfazed on the trip home. Buechner had to go the box, too, so the other team hadn’t even gotten a power play.  The Moncton Hawks won. All is right in Luc’s world.  Luc opens his pack of red vines and offers Jacks one, draping the other over his lip like a mustache, giggly and squirmy on the ride back and still Jacks’ best friend.

 

Jacks and his mom eat dinner at the Chantals’ before she has to go in to work her night shift,  and Jacks has enough stuff stashed in Luc’s dresser, a toothbrush in the bathroom, that he hasn’t needed an overnight bag in at least a year.  The Penguins game on the DVR ends in an OT victory and a beautiful glove save by Fleury, had a 2nd period textbook gorgeous Malkin+Crosby powerplay goal that has Luc talking about it until he falls asleep mid-sentence.  Jacks has trouble following him, lies awake, too nervous to sleep.

 

Eventually, sometime after midnight,  he gives up and creeps downstairs in the hope of cartoons. But, downstairs, the TV is already on in the den, turned low, just one lamp on near the couch, and Luc’s dad is sitting there, watching some weird show with a guy with a forehead that is all giant wrinkles and some bald dude, on a spaceship.  It looks dumb.  

 

“Oh,” Jacks says, caught sneaking around in the middle of the night.

 

Luc’s dad just smiles and pats the couch next to him. “Nothing on right now except old _Star Trek_ reruns I’m afraid. Still, at least it’s _The Next Generation,_ right?”

Jacks sits down next to him gingerly and shrugs.

“Can’t sleep?” Dr. Chantal asks.  

“No.”

“Me either.”  He offers a small, rueful grin. “I’ve always had trouble sleeping.” He taps his head, “Perils of living too much up here. Did you have a nightmare?”

“Couldn’t fall asleep.”

“Hmmmm, you had a pretty big day today. Big win, something like a scuffle, Elise says, with boys from the other team.”

“Yeah.” Jacks kicks at the edge of the coffee table, then realizes he’s doing it and stops.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I can’t imagine Luc as riled up as she says he was.  The other boy must have really made him mad.”  His tone is light and casual, and exactly the tone grownups use when they’re fishing for information.  

Nonetheless, Jacks feels the words being pulled out of him anyway.  He shrugs and says, “Buechner said a bad word, that’s all.” Then rushes to add, “I don’t think Luc even knows what it meant.”  

That makes Luc’s dad laugh quietly. “That I doubt. You boys have been playing minor hockey for years, I doubt there’s very many curse words you two don’t know, even if we were the type of parents to be uptight about that sort of thing.”  

Jacks doesn’t really want to talk about cursing with a grownup, it feels too much like he’d get in trouble, even if Luc’s parents really weren’t uptight about most curse words, in English or French. He’s never heard them use _that_ word before though.

“But you _do_ know what it means?” Luc’s dad asks after a few seconds of looking at Jacks and Jacks looking, determinedly, at the TV screen.  Luc’s dad has the subtitles turned on, with the volume so low, and the bald guy keeps jumping around in time, apparently.

“Jacks?” Luc’s dad asks again, persistent in a way he almost never is.

“ _Itmeansaboywholikesotherboys,_ ” Jacks says blinking rapidly at his sock feet, so that his eyes don’t water.

“Oh,” Luc’s dad breathes out, soft and quiet. “I think I know what word you mean. You’re right, that’s not a very nice word.”

“Luc doesn’t even know what it means.”  

“I would imagine not. It’s certainly not a word he’s heard at home.”

Jacks bites the inside of his cheek.  “He was really upset about it, but he doesn’t even…”  Jacks trails off, frustrated and angry.

“Well, you two are very good friends. And the word obviously upset you. I imagine he was reacting more to your reaction, than to the word itself.”

“I guess,” Jacks says, “It’s dumb. I can probably go back to sleep now.”

“Sure.  But you’re welcome to stay down here with me and watch some TV until you get sleepy, if you’d rather.”  On the TV the bald man is saying “ _We are what we are, and we're doing the best we can. It is not for you to set the standards by which we should be judged!_ ” in some sort of courtroom.  

“What is it, anyway?” Jacks asks, despite himself.

“ _Star Trek?_  It’s a show about… the future, I guess. About space travel and adventure and exploration.”

“It looks dumb.”

Luc’s dad laughs. “It is a little cheesy.  But it's… nice. I guess. Uplifting. To imagine a world where…” He pauses, like he’s considering his words carefully, “a world where humans still have the same flaws we’ve always had. But are… committed to… bettering themselves, moving away from those flaws, to uniting through peace and learning and acceptance of people as they are, in all their… diversity.”

“I guess,” Jacks offers, but doesn’t go upstairs.  Instead, Luc’s dad hands him a blanket from the top of the couch and he wraps himself up in it.  

“If you’re going to be staying, we really ought to start from the beginning.” Luc’s dad stands to fish out some dusty old blu-rays from the entertainment stand cupboards.  “Let’s see, episode one, season one.”  He glances over at Jacks again and says, “You know, I know we’ve had this talk with Luc, but I imagine we ought to be having it with both of you boys more as you get older.  Hockey is… not without its faults.  I know sports are supposed to teach you character building… well… That’s a talk for another time, perhaps not so late at night.  But most of the time, the stuff players say to each other, on the ice, chirps, they’re just… random shots fired in the dark.  Insults without any particular meaning attached. They’re not… it doesn’t matter, how a person is.  Who they like. It doesn’t make them bad, or anything wrong with them, just because they like boys instead of girls, or girls instead of boys.  But regardless, there’s no way to know, what a person is like, _who_ they like, just by looking at them.  There’s no way for someone else to know that about someone. The only one that gets to decide that is the person themself, about themselves.  I’m sure it’s a word that Jesse Buechner doesn’t even understand himself, really, just something he’s heard people say.”

“I know that,” Jacks says, defensive and prickly even though his heart is hammering in chest.

Luc’s dad smiles at him ruefully. “I know you do.  Hockey makes you boys grow up faster than anyone ought… Well. Nevermind.”  

Luc’s dad arranges himself back on the couch, with his teacup, but delays at pressing play.  “There’s nothing anyone could say about either of you boys, untrue, true, whatever, that would ever make us love you any less. I know hockey can be tough, that sometimes parts of it are.... Well. Your mother, Elise and I are so proud, of both of you. Nothing’s ever going to change that.”  

Jacks wiggles further down into his blanket and stares furiously at the TV screen. “I know,” he mumbles, stomach half squirming embarrassment and half sudden swooping… relief? Need to cry?  Light-ness?  

On the screen, a ship is moving through space.  “ _These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before…_ ”

 

 

**Peewee**

 

They’re in Peewee, sitting next to each other at the rink, eating their snack before practice, and Luc has a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in his bag with his orange slices and pretzel sticks. He’s staring at it, balefully, like some kids stare at the crease when the goalie’s in net.

Luc’s parents aren’t the sort of parents to force him to eat stuff he doesn’t like, so Jacks doesn’t know why he would have brought pb&j.  “Did your mom run out of lunch meat?” Jacks asks.  Luc’d brought a turkey sandwich for lunch, but maybe there’d only been enough for one sandwich.  Jacks has tuna salad today, he can trade.

Luc sets his shoulders, glances at Jacks and says, “I like peanut butter and jelly,” and takes a bite. It makes Jacks angry, a little, because he knows, he _knows_ that Luc doesn’t, has heard Luc whine about how gross the bread is when it’s soggy from the jelly before.

“You don’t,” Jacks says, kicking his feet out against the rail in front of them.

Luc rolls his eyes. “I do too. Everyone likes pb&j.”  Jacks knows that means “hockey players like pb&j.”  Not every hockey player, probably, but lots of the guys in the NHL, including Sidney Crosby, so: everyone.  Everyone that mattered, at least.  It makes Jacks clench his fist, and bite the inside of his mouth and want to… throw the sort of tantrum he hasn’t in years because he’s a big kid. He can see Luc’s screwy logic: Hockey players like pb&j. Luc is a hockey player. Therefore, Luc likes pb&j.  Hockey players like dogs, and fishing, and expensive watches, and the movie _Slapshot._  Luc has already finished his sandwich, eaten it four giant bites, slaps Jacks on the shoulder, says, “Hurry up and finish, bro, we’ve got to get our kit on.”

“How was your sandwich?” Jacks asks, a little snippier than he means to be.

“Good,” Luc says with a smile, and the terrible thing is that Jacks can’t even be mad at him for lying to him, because he’s not. He’s decided that he likes it, so he does.  

“Hey,” Jacks changes the subject, “only two weeks to Winnipeg!”

  
  
  
  
  


It’s not like he knew, exactly.  Jesse Buechner aside, he didn’t really know. Not for sure.  But, he knew enough to know to _hide_ it.  Knew to keep his eyes to himself, know that the fluttery feeling he got in his chest when Luc laughed wasn’t what other boys felt, to know not to mention the fact that when he thought about grown ups and getting married and what it’d be like, when he was old, to have someone for the rest of his life, he couldn’t really ever see a girl. That mostly he just thought it’d be really, really, nice to get to spend the rest of his life with Luc.

 

But the first time he got hard. The very first time that wasn’t like, his body doing something weird and inexplicable for no reason,  they were sitting on the beach and Luc was eating a peach.  The juice was pooling in his hand and running down his forearm, and he was sweaty and his back was covered in sand, hair still wet with ocean water, and instead of wiping his arm on his swim trunks, he just licked the juice off in a long strip, tongue curling at his wrist before lapping at his palm and sucking each one of his fingers.  And Jacks.  Well. Jacks rolled over to hide his boner in the sand and his blush in the cross of his arms and Luc had kicked him in the shin with a bare toe and said, “Hey you want me to put sunscreen on your back so you won’t burn?” and Jacks had tried not to groan, or cry, or make hasty decisions about quitting hockey and stowing away on a train car to run away to the Yukon forever.

 

 

**Bantam**

 

Luc is the first boy in their grade to kiss a girl.  By the time they’re out of elementary, there are very few girls in the school Luc hasn’t kissed, although, as far as Jacks can tell, he doesn’t really try very hard to do so, like some of the other boys. Mostly girls kiss Luc, and Luc lets himself be kissed, enjoys it while it’s happening and as soon as it stops goes back to hockey. Hockey and Jacks.  So that’s okay.    

There was a brief period from around when they were around 11 where the girls somehow decided that this meant that Luc was their _boyfriend_.  Luc had seemed completely mystified by this assumption, especially since he had been, at the time, letting himself be kissed by quite a few different girls.  Probably if Luc was some other person, everyone would have gotten mad at him or something.  But Luc at 12 was much the same at Luc at 20, and what really happened was that Luc smiled and was charming and baffled, but polite and earnest looking and he did that thing with his eyes, and everyone very reasonably agreed that Luc spent far too much time concentrating on hockey to be anybody’s boyfriend.

 

And then later, unbeknownst to Luc, a group of girls—utilizing some cutting edge economic theory—sort of… self-organized and decided that if one of them couldn’t have all of him, they might as well share some of him because he was too pretty to go to waste. They put together some sort of secret rota for a schedule where they each got a day for kissing him. The competition to get on it was absolutely brutal. Luc hadn’t known, of course. He’d just kept playing hockey and never questioned that for some reason he only ever kissed Grace-Anne on Mondays or Mackenzi on Thursdays. Jacks had known because he is observant. And because Mackenzi had told him.  Jacks tried to bring it up once.

“Don't you think it’s kinda weird that you only kiss Mackenzi on Thursdays?” Jacks began.

“Why?” Luc’d asked, pausing the 20 seconds of Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne trading passes down the ice before scoring on the Rangers that he’d been watching on repeat for the past 15 minutes, notepad out, fingers twitching around the pen like he’s envisioning making the the shot himself, feet twitching like he’s following them on the ice, “do you want to trade days or something?”  

“Nevermind,” Jacks sighed.  And then, because it’s Paul Kariya, “If we try that passing pattern, with Nicky defending against…”

“Oh my god,” Luc says, “yeah, like run it up the…”

“Right.” Jacks nods, taking the pen from Luc, and grabbing a napkin, “See and then he goes, like, and you come up—”

“Shit, and then we get ‘em up behind the net and.  Beauty, Jacks, beauty.”

  
  
  
  
  


 

Jacks’ mom drops him off at morning practice before school and Jacks wasn’t feeling well, but he makes it through half of practice before he has to rush off the ice and puke in the bucket behind the bench.  Luc’s dad is the one to pick them up today to drive them to school afterwards and he takes one look at Jacks, nursing a Gatorade and looking green and queasy and calls Jacks’ mom.  “No, no,” Jacks hears him from the back seat where he’s resting his head on Luc’s lap and Luc is carding his fingers through Jacks’ hair, “it’s no problem Charlotte, I’ll just take him back to our house, there’s no need to use up one of your sick days,” and then, “Don’t worry about that, it’s Tuesday, I don’t have any classes except an undergraduate lab and my grad students handle that anyway, I can work on writing from home on my laptop. It’s not an inconvenience at all.”  So Luc goes to school and Jacks goes back to the Chantals’ to lie on the couch and doze with the television on and the trashcan by his head.  

Luc’s dad sits at the kitchen table and types on his laptop and comes in intermittently with Tylenol or Gatorade or jello or a cool washcloth.  At lunch he comes in with chicken soup but Jacks is feeling too tired and achey and nauseated to eat it.  Luc’s dad is tall and lanky, with blond hair fading into gray, and thin wire-framed spectacles and he watches Jacks push his soup around with a spoon with the same quiet reserve he watches everything else, but he’s gentle and concerned when he turns the TV down and says, “Would you like to see if you can nap for a little while? I can read to you.”  

That sounds… good.  Jacks’ mom used to read to him, still does sometimes, but she’s busy, works a lot of long shifts.  Jacks nods, hesitantly and Luc’s dad says, “I’ll go to Luc’s room and see what you boys have to read,” except he must see the face Jacks makes because he laughs and says, “You don’t want to read _The Greatest Game_ or _Pond Hockey_?”  Jacks groans.  Luc’s dad studies him for a long moment and then says, “You know, I think I have just the book. The perfect sick day book.”

Jacks closes his eyes and when he opens them Luc’s dad is sitting down in the chair next to the couch.  He reaches over to lay a cool washcloth over Jacks eyes adjusts the glasses on his nose, takes a sip from his tea cup, and then starts reading.  “ _Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun…_ ”

Jacks falls asleep at Chapter 3, and when he wakes it’s late in the afternoon and he feels like he’s getting better, whatever 12-hour bug mostly passed, and Luc’s mom and dad are in the kitchen, the familiar noise of banging of pots and pans and conversation about their days in quiet happy French, and Luc is sitting on the other end of the couch, hand around Jacks’ ankle, flipping through channels. When he gets home that night there’s a book tucked in his bookbag, along with the folder of homework Luc had brought home for him - black with a laughing green planet and hitchhiking thumb, “P. Chantal” printed neatly in the inside front cover.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


They go see the Marlies play for Jacks’ birthday and Jacks goes excited to see Nylander play but it’s Rich Clune who sees their poster and throws them a puck over the glass during warmups. A few minutes later he’s near their side of the glass again, and takes his helmet off.  He’s sweaty and flushed and his hair is sticking up in all angles from taking his helmet off and Jacks feels nervous, a tense weird unasked-for giggle trying to escape his throat, but also like he can’t move.

 

After the game the parents buy him a jersey. His mom points at the Nylander one and Jacks says “I want a Clune one, actually.”  

“Seriously?” Luc says. “Clune?”

“I want a Clune one,” Jacks repeats, clutching the puck.  

The Marlies aren’t hotshot NHL stars that get shuffled off onto private jets after the game. Some of them stay after to sign things for kids.  Clune’s in a damp gray t-shirt, and his shoulders are big, thighs huge in the sweatpants he’s wearing, and Jacks doesn’t know what to do with it, but he wears his jersey on the whole drive back to the hotel, and to sleep that night.  

 

He grits his teeth, a few weeks later, when Luc’s at the dentist and Jacks know he won’t be showing up unexpectedly any time in the next hour or so.  Locks his bedroom door, and opens the incognito tab on his laptop and googles “gay”.  

 

 

**Midget**

 

Jesse Buechner elbows Jacks in the head and Luc loses his shit, has to be dragged off by the linesmen and is lucky he doesn’t get a game misconduct.  

His parents talk to him at the kitchen table, after the game. “J’men calice” he can hear Luc’s voice rise, from where Jacks’ sitting on the couch,  “C’est _Jacks_. S’il essaie cette marde à nouveau, je le ferai encore.” ~~~~

Jacks adjusts the icepack on his neck and flips through channels, Luc’s parents’ voices a low murmur, although he thinks he hears something about “appropriate response levels.”

“Sure,” he hears Luc say at the end, and then the stomp up the stairs, in a huff.  

 

Dr. Luc’s Mom comes into the living room, checks his pupils again and tells him that he even though he’s passed concussion protocol at the rink he needs to be careful and get checked again tomorrow.  

“I know,” Jacks says. Adds a belated “thanks” a second later. “Hey” Jacks asks, suddenly, “So, Luc. Uh. Did you guys name him after Jean-Luc Picard?”

Luc’s mom grins at him. “Well. I certainly wouldn’t tell _him_ that.” She shrugs. “He’s named after his grandfather, technically, but I admit that that’s probably another reason we were fond of the name.”

“He’s a good captain,” Jacks offers, and then, to clarify, “Luc, I mean.”

“Yeah,” Luc’s mom says, softly, “I know. He is.”  Her grin goes a little wry. “Maybe a little different captaining style than Jean-Luc.”

“But still good,” Jacks says, firm.

“Yeah, still good.”  She kisses the top of Jacks’ head.  

 

That night they’re brushing their teeth next to each other in the bathroom.  Jacks spits in the sink and says, “Sorry you got in trouble with your parents.”

Luc shrugs, looking totally unconcerned, “You stand up for your boys, you get time in the box, that's life.”  He squeezes Jacks’ shoulder. “I’m gonna call Brisson tomorrow, get us lined up with the right strength trainers this summer.”

“Luc…”

“Hey.” Luc’s brows wrinkle, concerned, “Hey, Jacks, you’re okay, right?”

“I’m fine.” Jacks wants to roll his eyes, but he remembers Luc’s white knuckles and clenched jaw on the car ride back, and he just squeezes Luc’s arm back, and says, “Seriously, Luc, I’m fine.”

  
  


Julie Tremblay sucks Luc’s dick for the first time three weeks before Luc’s 15th birthday, the day before she moves away because her dad’s job transferred him to Ottawa.  Julie Tremblay is two years older than them, too cool to hang around normal grade nine kids, but Luc is an exception, of course. Luc skipped whatever early teen awkwardness the rest of them are inflicted with, so older girls forget sometimes that he’s not their age.  The entirety of his focus is put so firmly on hockey that it gives him this removed disinterest that everyone else has to fake.  It’s a look he pulls off well, and that girls love, that polite, earnest, disinterested charm, like it’s no big deal if they want to or not, like they’d need to really work hard to get him undone.   

Luc tells Jacks about it afterwards, of course, flops down on the couch next to Jacks so close he’s practically in Jacks’ lap, but that’s no different than normal.  He burrows his head under Jacks’ arm, while Jacks is trying to watch _Battlestar Galactica,_ which he'd just discovered a few weeks before, and proceeds to tell Jacks in explicit detail what Julie Tremblay’s mouth had felt like.  By the time he’s done, Jacks is biting the inside of his cheek so hard it might be bleeding, and Luc only has to ask once if he wouldn’t rather go shoot pucks in the driveway than keep watching TV.  Hitting something with a stick as hard as he can for a couple of hours sounds like a great idea.   

 

Jacks goes through a sad-indie folk stage, listens to Hozier over and over and over again on repeat. The album’s a couple of years old, but it’s new to Jacks.  He makes a playlist that’s just “Take Me To Church” 25 times, broken up every once in awhile with “Someone New.”   He’s aware that he’s being pathetic, but it’s hard to stop.  He buys a leather jacket with all his combined birthday money.  It helps, a little.

 

 

 

They fight, of course they do, sometimes. You can’t spend that much time together without needing to.  Jacks has had a headache all morning, since Luc woke him up at 5am by sitting on top of him and saying, “Wake up wake up wake up wake up time to go practice drills.”  A puck hit his hand in practice, and it’s not _injured_ , nothing’s broken, but his index finger is bruised, and it’s been throbbing all day, a low-grade persistent pain that’s harder to ignore than other hockey-aches because it’s his hand.  He wants to go back to his own home and unwind, but he can’t because his mom’s in Halifax for the next week at some seminar/conference/certification thing and he’s staying with the Chantals.  It’s fine.  Normally it’d be great. But he just wants… some time alone.  Space.  Space to brood on his own, and work through the steady stream of books he’s constantly borrowing from the Chantals’ bookshelves like it’s a public library, books that Luc’s dad is occasionally passing to him, or leaving in his bag, or saying, “Have you read this? The plot is a little outrageous, but it’s good nonetheless” over the dinner table.

Luc hasn’t even done anything terrible, but they’ve been squabbling with each other all day.  Jacks wins Mario Kart which makes Luc sore and unbearable.  “Can we play ‘chel?”  he asks.

“No,” Jacks says, queuing up Mass Effect because they played chel yesterday.

“Uhnggggghhhhhhhhhhhh,” Luc whines and attempts to steal the controller from him.    

They’re wrestling on the couch for controller 1, rougher than playing, when Jacks elbows Luc in the jaw and Luc kicks out with his leg, knocking over a lamp at the same time that he tries to flip them over to get Jacks pinned, and they both go rolling off the couch in a spectacular thud, simultaneously with the crash of the lamp hitting the floor.  

“Boys!” Dr. Luc’s Mom snaps, exasperated from the door to the kitchen. “Arrêter les niaiserie!!!”

“He started it!” they both shout in unison.

Dr. Luc’s Mom gives them a look and says, “I need to go to town for some things. Luc, you’re coming with me.”

“But—” Luc protests.

“No buts. Go get your shoes on and get your jacket from your room. Now.”

Luc grumbles up the stairs and Dr. Luc’s Mom looks at him. “Is that okay, Oliver? If you’d rather go instead… you just looked like you need a little… You can come with us if you’d rather.”

“It’s okay. Thanks. I… it’d be nice to.”

“Luc’s not very much of an introvert.” She smiles. “Sometimes people need some quiet time. It doesn’t mean you’re not friends. And I could use his help, I’m going to make him carry plants around for me at the nursery.”

That sounds like something Luc will hate, but Jacks is feeling grouchy enough not to care, especially if it means he gets the house alone to himself for a few hours.  

 

Luc comes back from the trip to Canadian Tire and the local nursery with dirt on the front of his track pants, and a sour expression.  He sits down next to Jacks on the bed upstairs where Jacks is curled up around a pillow reading John Carter of Mars and trying to figure out whether he liked it or thought it was ridiculous.  

“Hey,” Luc says, “Maman says some people need more time like… not talking… than other people.  Désolé, dude.”

“‘S’okay,” Jacks says,and scoots over so there’s room for Luc on the bed.

Luc lies down facing him.  “No, it’s… you’re always really good about knowing when I need like… you know.” He shrugs.

“To cuddle?” Jacks asks, dry.  “Or to go work out until your legs don’t work.”  You’d think Luc was touch-starved, the way he leans into every touch, but he’s not. Obviously.  He just… Needs physical affection, in a way Jacks thinks most people don’t. At least, not that much.

“Either.” Luc shrugs. “Anyway, I’ll try to be… better about noticing when you need like… quiet reading time or whatever.”

“Thanks,” Jacks says quietly

“Yeah, dude. Of course, you're my bro. We gotta be good at spending a lot of time together, for when we go to the Q. If I annoy you too much you might not want to billet with me.”

That’s more than a year away, but of course Luc is already planning for it.  “We’re probably going to go to different teams, Chants.”

“No we’re not,” Luc says, “we’re not, Jacks, I know. We’re going to play on the same team. We’re going to win the Memorial Cup and go first in the NHL draft.”

Jacks laughs. “We can't both go first in the draft.”

“Yes we can!”  

“It doesn’t work that way!”

“It does too! I say it does. Some team will just have to pick both of us!”

“Numbers don’t just work a different way because you say they do, jesus, you’re bossy.”

“Yes, they do,” Luc says and pinches his side and Jacks gets him in a headlock, drags his knuckles over his head while Luc yelps and then knees him in the thigh and rolls them over.  “Dirty pool!” Luc shouts and they roll off the bed onto the floor with another massive thump and crash, this time laughing and grinning.  

  


Jacks’ first _real_ kiss (and he’s not counting Mackenzi, who used to kiss him on Wednesdays before French class when they were 11 and 12), was when he was 15, with Honoré, who was a year above them.  Honoré was tall, Acadian, with dark hair, long eyelashes, and high cheekbones.  Jacks tried very, very, very hard not to feel bad about all those characteristics.  He was slender, like Luc was, but in a different way.  Honoré was sort of built like a lanky stick, straight up and down, a theater kid with no interest in athletics and no real muscle definition.  Luc was slender because he was 15, burning easily 7,000 calories a day, and constantly hungry, hips still tiny but torso flaring out into the wide angle of his shoulders, knobby shoulder joints and clavicles, the fan of his lats just beginning to form, the tight lines of his ab muscles looking like they were drawn on, big hands and big feet and slender wrists, but no real gangly awkwardness.  

Honoré had an undercut that was pretty long on top, pierced ears, a habit of sneaking out behind the bleachers to smoke, a rainbow flag patch sewn onto his backpack, and no qualms about talking about the fact that he was wearing designer women’s jeans. Jacks mostly just tried to pretend like he didn’t know Honoré existed, except for the times they sneaked into the janitor’s closet behind the band room together, or the times that Luc was elsewhere, gone to his own house already, and Jacks sneaked out with Honoré who picked him up in his dad’s truck, drove them out to the park, and kissed him.   

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Luc’s Netflix and Chilling or something at Lisa-Marie’s house, which means Jacks is in his room playing Mass Effect, and talking on group chat with some fandom friends on Tumblr until his Mom leaves to go over to Jim’s house and he can sneak out to see Honoré.  He gets up to go downstairs to get some juice but stops at the stairs because he can hear his mom and Jim talking in the kitchen.  

“I was talking to Sean,” Jim is saying, “about colleges and those boys are ruining their chances at ever playing NCAA with this major junior nonsense, I can’t believe you’d let Oliver sign with anyone, Charlotte.”

“It’s definitely a big decision but we’ve all gone over the consequences with them, and they’ve made their decision, they think they’re ready and —”

“They’re barely going to be in high school. They need to be thinking about college.  You need to put a stop to this before they actually sign anything.  If he was my boy I wouldn’t —”

“He’s not your son, Jim,” Jacks’ mom says, hard and sharp, “and you’re not his father. I like you, Jimmy, and we’ve been having a nice time together, but if you come into my house and tell me how to raise my son again, we won’t be seeing each other anymore.”

“Oh, I can’t say anything about it at all, but if the Chantals say —”

“I think you’d better leave now, Jim.”

“Char —”

Jacks sits at the top of the stairs and listens to Jim leave without further argument and his mother let out a string of blistering, but quiet curses in the kitchen, the opening and closing of the refrigerator.  He’s still standing there when she walks by on her way to the living room and sees him.  

“Hey, baby,” she says, quiet. “I guess you heard that.”

Jacks lifts one shoulder in a quiet shrug.  

Her eyes flicker over him. “You look like you're dressed for going out, are you going to Luc’s tonight?”

“He’s over at Lisa-Marie’s.”

“He is?” She purses her lips. “Are you guys fighting?”

Her tone is weird, makes something in Jacks freeze up, want to hide, to snap, raise his hackles. “We have other friends. We’re not totally connected at the hip. I know other people.”

“Don’t snap at me, Oliver. I’ve had a long day.”  She sighs, looks over Jacks dark jeans and t-shirt. “You know you have to actually ask permission if you’re going over to someone else’s house other than the Chantals.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Jacks sighs and plops down on the couch next to her. “Hey you wanna watch something together?”

Her face goes all soft.  “Yeah, honey, that’d be good.”  Jacks flips on _Star Trek TNG_ that he has loaded up on his queue.  

“Oh, your grandpa used to love this show,” his mom says, quietly and Jacks smiles.

“Yeah it’s pretty good, eh?” he says and leans up against her. “It’s nice it’s like… I don’t know, I like thinking about different… what it’d be like, to live in a different world, you know, like the future where…”

“Oh, honey,” she says, soft, and puts her hand in his hair and her arm around his shoulders.  

“You know,” she says later, halfway through the episode, “if you didn’t want to go to the Q, that would be fine.  I know Luc has his mind made up, but like you said, you boys aren’t totally connected at the hip. You’re allowed to want to do different things from each other.”

“Just because Jim says—”

“I’m not asking you because of Jim.  We already talked about it, and I know you’ve thought about it seriously, and if you want to go the Juniors that’s fine.  No one is going to stop you. I’m just asking you because it’s a big decision, and I want to make sure it’s what you want, not just what Luc wants.”  

“I want to go,” Jacks says.  His whole life he’s been working to play hockey good enough that Luc doesn’t have to leave him behind.  So that he can follow to whatever next level Luc rises to.  When coaches had talked about Luc moving from atom to peewee early, Jacks had trained just as hard so he could move with him. Luc’s not going to Juniors while Jacks stays here in New Brunswick.

“You know you’re probably not going to be on the same team together.”

Jacks knows that.  But.  Well. He doesn’t want to think about what it would be like, if Luc went to the Q and Jacks didn’t go at all. And anyway.  Luc had squeezed his hand under the table after the Big Family Meeting where they’d talked about hockey, and Juniors, and the NCAA and said, “Don’t worry, Jacks, I know we’re going to the same team. I know it.” And Jacks had believed him.  

  


It’s hours before Jacks’ mom is asleep and Honoré texts him to tell him that he’s parked a couple houses down.  

“Wow,” Honoré says when Jacks climbs into his truck.  “Pourquoi tu fait la tête?”

“Whatever.” Jacks rolls his eyes.

 

“If you’re going to make me listen to Nightwish,” Honoré says, once they’ve parked out in the woods, and the blankets are spread out on the truck bed, “then we’re going to smoke,” and fishes a joint somewhere out of the pocket of his jeans.  

 

Jacks watches the smoke roll from Honoré’s nostrils, curl out of his mouth, leans over and kisses him, swallows the smoke, breathes his air through the kiss, slides his hand over his hip.  They go like that in, starts and stops, Jacks getting hard in his jeans, wrapping himself around Honoré.  

“You know it still counts, even if you’re shotgunning it, right, Jackson?” Honoré smirks, halfway through. “Does Chantal know you’re out here, risking your lungs.”

“Shut up, please.” Jacks bites at Honoré’s lip.

“Are they your lungs, or are they his—”

“ _Shut. Up,_ ” Jacks hisses, and grinds his palm across the front of Honoré’s jeans to distract him.   Honoré gets his hands down Jacks’ pants, and nobody needs to talk for a while.    

  


“I can’t understand how you can listen to this shit and not be personally affronted that you don’t get to ride a unicorn into battle every day,” Honoré says, much later, when a chill is starting to set in and make Jacks’ skin prickle, and his high is almost completely gone.  

“Yeah,” Jacks says, lying on his back, staring up at the night sky.  “Well, I guess mythical creatures are pretty low on my list of shit I wish was different in the world.”

“Cry me a river, Jackson.” Jacks can practically hear the accompanying eye roll, but he’s still holding Jacks’ hand across his solar plexus, and Jacks can still feel the slow steady rise and fall of his breath. “You don’t _have_ to play hockey, nobody’s twisting your arm.”

“Fuck you, man,” Jacks says, but can’t manage any heat behind it, “I shouldn’t have to choose.”

“Yeah,” Honoré sighs, “okay, I’m not… You’re right. You shouldn’t have to choose. I just don’t get why you buy into that all bullshit.”

Jacks scrubs his other hand across his eyes, “Like 3/4 of it is only half bullshit, it’s just that the rest of it is really, _really_ bullshit.” He lets Honoré’s hand go, and sits up. “Okay, time to go, dude, I got practice in the morning.”

 

 

 

 

 

Around the time that Jacks started realizing that neither he or Mackenzi actually _liked_ kissing each other enough to want to go any further with it, Jacks also realized that he actually, legitimately _liked_ Mackenzi, who was a lot less boring than he’d thought for the past… ever.  He finds her copy of _Anansi Boys_ and spends two hours in her room, with the door shut and her parents not home, both of them relieved to be talking about Fat Charlie and Spider, and arguing about best movie/tv-show adaptations of Neil Gaiman books, and not having to half-heartedly try to feel each other up over their sweaters.  

“We should do this again,” he says, grinning as he heads out the back door to jump over the fence and run through the neighbor's yard to get to his own house.  

Mackenzi smiles at him, a smile he hadn’t ever seen before today, genuine and sly and not creepily _peppy_ and says “It’s a date, Jackson.”

“A not-date,” Jacks ventures, afraid he’s giving away too much. But Mackenzi only smiles bigger and echoes it back.  

 

It’s easy to let it become a thing.  Mostly he and Luc’s time is spent in hockey, and with each other, but there’s nights out with the rest of the guys, there’s evenings Luc’s spending kissing Lisa-Marie, and… well, any number of other people. And Mackenzi had a biting gallows humor, and a secret taste for angry old school punk music and a hoard of graphic novels pushed under her bed, out of sight.  All of which she keeps extremely well hid, under perfectly well applied eyeliner, designer handbags, and the ability to blink a lot, and say, “Oh my god really?”  

He wasn’t trying to have a beard, really, but he liked hanging out with Mackenzi, sometimes. When her life of high school social politicking wasn't too much to tolerate, she was funny as hell. He never said she was his girlfriend, and she never said it either, but people assumed that they had some sort of on again off again thing, and neither one of them corrected anyone, because it was convenient that way for both of them. The only one who knew different was Luc. Jacks not sure _how_ he knew, just knew that one time Luc had surfaced out of whatever hockey visualization dissociation state he’d fallen into during lunch one day, looked over at Jacks as they took their seats for history and said, “Why the fuck did Chris say you’re dating Mac? You’re not dating her.”  

 

It took a while to figure out why she was bothering faking being this tiny blonde cheerleader when she so clearly hated it.  Jacks was faking it because he loved hockey (and Luc) and because he wanted to _keep_ playing hockey (with Luc).  Then one time they went to a giant house party and Lisa-Marie got too drunk on Mike's hard lemonades and Jacks saw them in the bathroom for a just a second, before Mackenzi caught his eye for a long moment and pulled the door shut.  Lisa-Marie, kneeling there on the tile, wretched and crying through puking, Mackenzi, face soft for real, not the fake big-eyed doe look she wore most of the time, one hand holding Lisa-Marie’s hair back from her face, the other hand rubbing soft circles on her back.

 _Oh_ , Jacks thought.  Oh.  What a fucking tragedy, he thought, maudlin and a little drunk already, what a sad pair of pining fucks they were.   

Luc dragged him off to beer pong a few minutes later, was loud and affectionate and handsy, a constant litany of how Jacks is the best beer pong partner, how they’re going to beat everyone else’s ass, total pong domination, Jacks is the best partner, not just at beer pong, but hockey, bro, hockey, so good at hockey, Jacks is the best bro, the best bro in the whole world, and Jacks tried not to think about how Luc’s hair is hockey-long at this point, how if he was so drunk he was sick Jacks would hold his hair back for him.  He shotguns a Molson before they even start the game, then tells himself to sack up and get himself together.  

 

Jacks got spectacularly drunk that night. They walked home to Jacks’ house because his mom was working nights, sat on the back porch drinking water and trying to sober enough that the backyard would stop spinning.  Jacks sloppy on Luc's shoulder, complaining about _fucking metaphors_. “It's not even like good parallel themes, it's so fucking heavy handed, like fucking Mac and Lisa-marie, it's bullshit, it's fucking terrible, I don't deserve shitty metaphors, Chants.”

“It's true, bro.” Luc nods, petting his hair. “I mean, I have no idea what you’re talking about right now, but most books are boring, and the ones you read are the worst, they don't even have hockey plays in them.”

“There's no pictures!” Jacks shouts in an exaggerated Gaston voice and then snickers.

“Exactly,” Luc agrees.

“Luc,” Jacks says frustrated, “no no no no no no, Luc, you're smart, you're so smart, so smart, why do, why do you do that, Luc, Why do you act like you're not smart?”

“Hey.” Luc laughs. “I'm hockey smart.”

“No.” Jacks pushes his shoulder, angry. “No bullshit, I'm so tired of bullshit, you're smart, smart for real.”

In the flicker of the porch light, Luc’s face looks momentarily, fleetingly lost and then he gives Jacks a gentle shove and a grin that's sad around the edges or maybe that's just the night and says, “Nah, Jacks, you're the brains of this operation, that's why we put you in the center.”

Jacks opens his mouth to argue some more but Luc's pulling him up by his arm, “C’mon, bud, time for another Gatorade and sleep.”

Luc and Jacks chug Gatorades and Luc flicks his stomach when his arms are lifted drinking and Jacks gives him a ball tap in retaliation which results in them trying to trip each other up the stairs, giggling and shushing each other, until Jacks finally asks, “Why are we being quiet, the house is empty?” but somehow that only makes the need for quiet more important.

By the time they fall into bed, it's silence that's looming and huge and echoing through the house until Luc says, “Because of press.”

“What?”

Luc rolls a little to face him in bed, gives him Earnest Hockey Face #1, the first one he learned years ago,  all wide eyed and Good Canadian Boy and says, “We just want to go out there and give 'em 110% tonight, really bring it home for the boys.” He looks young and earnest and like he's never ever in his life thought of giving Hockey Canada anything less than every ounce of blood and sweat he could give.

“Jesus, Luc,” Jacks said, inches from him.

“It's easier,” Luc says, “all the press shit, it easier if they think you… You only know how to say that shit because that's… You don't know anything else, you never thought about anything else. They don't… poke and pry if they think there's nothing underneath.”

“That's bullshit,” Jacks hisses, quiet and violent.

Luc just shrugs. “It's hockey.”

  
  


 

 

 

 

“Do you ever wonder if you’re only popular because of Luc?” Mac asks him one evening. She’s still got stray bits of glitter on her face and in her hair from some school Pep Show that Jacks and Luc missed because of hockey practice, and they’re sitting on the swings in the neighborhood park a few blocks away from their houses, despite the facts that it’s still snowing in the spring, “Not,” she starts back up, before Jacks can answer, “that I think that about you or something, I just…”  She bites her lip and then exhales big and loud and it makes her bangs puff up and then flop back down. “I just… I used to think that all the time, that the only reason people didn’t notice or care how weird I am is because I’m friends with Lisa-Marie.”

“Sometimes, I think,” Jacks says, slow and careful, “I think the only reason I _exist_ , the only reason I’m _real_ is because of Chants.”

“That’s so fucked up,” she says finally, and thunks her head against his shoulder, burrowing under so his arms around her.  

“Yeah,” Jacks agrees.

“Like, seriously, so so fucked.”

“I know.” He squeezes her arm and then stands. “Come on, let’s go to Timmy’s and get hot chocolate. Your hands are getting all cold.”

“Unnnnghhhhh,” Mac whines, big and exaggerated. “I don’t wanna walllllkkkk.”

“No whining—‘if it’s not worth the work, it’s not worth the win’.”

“You’re so fucking damaged,” she groans but heaves herself out of the swing.  

“We can play fuck-marry-kill on the way and you call tell me all the creative ways you’ve thought of murdering all the guys on the lacrosse team.”

That makes her grin, “Oh goodie, I have a list. Let’s start with the classics:  Chad McMichaels.  Which god was it that got tied to a rock and an eagle eats his liver every day?”

  
  
  


 

 

Luc has “real sex” for the first time with Lisa-Marie, the summer before they leave for juniors, after the draft when somehow the Drakkar had pulled some sort of crazy trade shit and gotten the number one and number two picks of draft.  Luc had grinned at Jacks after dinner and said, “I told you we’d both go first.”

“ _We_ didn’t both go first, that’s not how numbers work, you idiot.” Jacks smiles and Luc grins and says, “Whatever, we’re both Drakkar,” smug and satisfied and even more convinced that the universe will happily reorder itself for him.

 

Anyway, Jacks knows Luc’s going to have sex before Luc does because Lisa-Marie decides and tells Mackenzi, and Mackenzi shows up to his house after dinner with a pint of ice cream and Neil Gaiman’s _American Gods_ on an old blu-ray.  

“We should fuck,” she says, half way through episode 2.  

“What the fuck,” he says, flatly.  

“We should just do it.  Get it over with, right? Lisa’s going to go all the way with Luc tomorrow at Nick’s party. She told me.”  She takes another vicious bite of ice cream.  

Jacks wants to say, “Do you really think that will help at all, because I’m pretty damn sure it won’t.”  He wants to say, “I’m not sure I can, like it’s not physically repulsive to think about it, but it’s sure as hell not appealing.”  He wants to say, “You’re not going to love her any less, no matter what we do.”  But he’s not ready to say it out loud, not to anyone, and _plausible deniability_ is a phrase that is really dear to Jacks’ heart.  

So what he actually says is “She knows it's not going to like… make him want to actually date her right? Like that is never going to happen. I know they’ve been hooking up on the regular, but he’s not going to want to—”

Mac snorts. “It's not like that for her. Luc is the best, and she wants the best. That's it.”

Sometimes Jacks thinks Mackenzi could do better than Lisa-Marie, as far as hopeless tragic gay crushes go.  

 

Luc and Lisa-Marie go off together at Nick’s big summer parents out of town house party, and Jacks hangs out in the pool, splashes around and drinks beer and doesn't think about it. Mackenzi looks miserable as fuck, and he tries to coax her into the pool with him and she tries to coax him into another guest bedroom and he pretends he doesn’t notice, like he’s so wrapped up in goofing off with the boys that he’s not paying attention, and she stomps one tiny foot and goes off on her own, to god knows where, and later Carter drunkenly tells him, in a sympathetic voice, that she went home with some guy on the swim team.  Jacks leaves, like he’s going to look for Mackenzi, or whatever the fuck it is that people think he would do in this situation, and instead texts Honoré, who picks him up two blocks away from Nick’s house, drives out to the woods, and sucks his dick.  Jacks returns the favor, on the blanket in the back of Honoré’s dad’s pickup truck, and then tries not to look at his phone to see if Luc texted him wondering why he left the party.  He hasn’t.  

“You’re kind of an asshole,” Honoré says, “so like, I don’t even know why I’m bothering, because you don’t deserve it, but I’m going to tell you anyway.”  He takes a long drink of his Moulson and gives Jacks a long assessing look. “One gay dude to another, the dumbest thing you can do is fall in love with a straight boy.”  

“I’m not—”

“Sure,” Honoré says, sarcastic, “You're not gay, even though you just had my dick in your mouth, and you're not in love with any straight boy, even though you’ve checked your phone 10 times in the last 5 minutes.  It’s just a coincidence that you like my hair and go off in three seconds every time I speak French.  I don’t give a fuck, Jackson, _j’men calice_ , you’re cute and you’ve got a nice mouth. I’m just telling you, boys like that, it doesn’t matter how much you love him, it doesn’t matter how much he loves _you_ , he’s never going to love you that way, so you might as well just get the fuck over it, or he’s going to break your heart and not even notice.”

  


Jacks goes home and takes a shower and gets in bed. He's half asleep when the door to his bedroom creaks open, and Luc crawls under the covers because he’s had a key to Jacks’ place since they were 8 years old.  He smells like beer and sex.  Jacks shoves him, not roughly, onto the floor. “Go take a shower, dude, you stink.”   

 

Luc laughs, a little drunk, and does as he’s told. When he comes back a few minutes later, he drops his towel and rifles through Jacks’ closet to find some boxers, crawls into Jacks’ bed, smelling like Jacks’ soap and Jacks’ laundry detergent. It's worse than the pre-shower smells, really.      

“Nicky told me you left early,” he says through a yawn.   

“You didn’t think I’d be off trying to make up with Mackenzi?”   

Luc rolls his shoulders against the mattress in a shrug, “It’s really weird,” he says through another yawn, “that people think you guys are dating.”

Jacks doesn’t know how to answer that so he lets the silence sit for a while.   

“Swimmers are weird,” Luc says, out of nowhere, apropos of fucking nothing, “like the way they swim builds their lats up in a way that they stick out a weird angle, it makes them look like lizards sometimes.”    Jacks snorts a little and elbows Luc.  “What, it’s true.”

Jacks shakes his head a little and asks, “How was Lisa-Marie?”

“Good.” Luc sounds sleepy, he rolls over so his face is up against Jacks’ shoulder. “Soft.  Girls are so soft, like, their skin is soft, and like, she felt so soft inside, and her perfume always smells like honeysuckle and she made these soft sounds, and pussy tastes good. like so good.”  He sat up a little, Jacks could see him grinning in the light from the window. “I made her come like twice.”

“Congrats?”  Jacks says, dry.

“Yeah.” Luc flops back down. “I’m pretty good at it.”   

Jacks snorts. “And modest.”   

Luc shrugs.  “You smell a little like smoke.”  He’s closer to Jacks this time, shoulders overlapping, lying a little on top of him. He rolls over and so he’s got one arm over Jacks’ torso.  “You shouldn’t let Carter smoke next to you, Oli, it’s bad for your lungs. We need maximum lung capacity so we can outskate everyone else.”  

As far as Jacks can remember Luc has never once ever called him Oliver in their whole lives.  He’s calls him Oli only at times like this, quiet and in the dark, normally when he’s doing something like this, just quietly assuming that every inch of Jacks, right down to his internal organs, belong to him, are under the purview of his power, the status of Jacks’ lungs as much his business as his own. Jacks can feel the warm metal of Luc’s necklace, where the charm's lying against his shoulder.   

Jacks moves, tries to shove Luc’s arm off of him. “Get’ff,” he says, “it’s too hot to have you on top of me like a rug.”  It wasn’t really, but Luc’s closeness seemed unbearable, at the moment.

Luc just locked his arm tighter. “J’men calice,” he says, and promptly falls asleep.  

  
  
  
  
  


 

 

Honoré texts him one night at the end of the summer, right before they leave for Baie Comeau.  

_I know you’re not busy tonight because I saw Chantal and Lisa-Marie on a date downtown._

_I know other people. I could be busy._ And then because he’s weak, _it’s not a date, it’s a going away goodbye thing before we leave._

 _Sure,_ Honoré texts back, _whatever you say Jackson. Anyway, since you’re not busy, you should come see Rasputina with me tonight in Halifax,  leaving in like 20 mins, show starts at 9_

_How much are tickets and are any actually still available?_

_You can have Mika’s, she was gonna go with me but canceled out on me. Parent bullshit like usual_

_I’ll have to ask my mom._

_Wear your leather jacket_

_It’s too hot for that_

Honoré just texts him back three fire emojis

 

“You look good.” Honoré grins when Jacks climbs into the passenger seat.  

“You look good too,” Jacks says, because Honoré does look good.  “Uh. You’ll have to tell Mika thanks for the ticket, I don’t have her number.”

Honoré just grins and turns up the music, rolls the windows down.

 

It’s probably okay to kiss Honoré, in the dark corners of the venue.  But, still.  

“Will you stop looking over your shoulder.” Honoré sighs. “None of your hockey bros are at a fucking Rasputina concert of all places.”

Jacks pushes his hair out of his face. “Sorry, I just.  Sorry. I know.”

Honoré rolls his eyes. “It’s fine, come on, I want to get closer to the stage before the next set.”

 

It’s late when the concert ends.  They go sit in a Timmy’s before getting back on the freeway.  Honoré’s driving and says he needs some coffee.  

“Was this a date?” Jacks asks, suddenly unsure if Mika even had a ticket to begin with.

Honoré takes a long sip of his latte and then shrugs, “It’s a going away good bye thing before you leave.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

The silence hangs there for a while before finally Honoré says, “One day left before you leave, what are you doing tomorrow?”

Jacks shrugs, thunks his head back against the seat, “Pack. Go get my hair cut a little I guess.”

“I like it, it’s going from like… hockey hair into like… metal hair.”

“Yeah well,” Jacks sighs. “Exactly. So haircut. I mean, like… with the Q and stuff.

Honoré bites his lip, “Seriously, that's such… It’s _your hair._ ”  What the fuck does Honoré know about it. Honoré’s hair is shaved on one side and half purple on the other.  What does Honoré know about…  “Like will all your sports bros really give you shit and not let you in their bro club if it’s 2 inches longer than it _should_ be.”

“No,” Jacks says, frustrated. “It’s not. It’s not about _that_ .  They don’t give a shit. As long as I can… as long as _we_ can get the fucking puck in the net, shoot pass score, they don’t give a fuck.”  He works on unclenching his hand around the table edge. “It’s about the fucking press. I can’t… they all want fucking _narrative_.  I can’t let the narrative be that I’m… any… there’s like… parameters. You stay in the right number of standard deviations, nobody looks too close, they don’t ask any… It’s fine. Nobody cares if I’m… it just has to be the right way, so that nobody looks too close.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“That’s hockey.” Jacks sighs, suddenly tired. It’s close to 3 am. He wants to go home.  

 

“Is it worth it?” Honoré asks, an hour into the drive back. The highway is dark and empty and the music is quiet, and Jacks is somehow holding Honoré’s hand again.  

Jacks thinks about the way blades sound on fresh ice, about the last game they'd played of the season: the rush of the puck hitting the neck, the pleasure of seeing a play fall into place, reading the ice and letting the puck go, of watching it snap against Luc's stick and sail behind a goalies glove, the satisfaction of the click of a blind pass connecting because Luc was exactly where he knew he’d be. Thinks about the press of bulky gear-clad bodies in the crush of an on ice hug, about cellying, about laughter on the bus on road trips and rowdy team breakfasts. About the dream of holding the Stanley Cup.  About holding Luc's hand in an alley in Winnipeg in the cold dark, the frost of their breath hanging in front of their mouths, magic hanging in the air.  About hockey.

  
“Yeah,” he says, soft and sad, “yeah, it's worth it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Arrêter les niaiserie!!! - Stop squabbling!  
> Désolé - Sorry  
> J’men calice - I don't give a fuck  
> C’est Jacks. S’il essaie cette marde à nouveau, je le ferai encore. - It's Jacks. If he tries that shit again, I'll do it again.  
> Pourquoi tu fait la tête? - Why are you sulking?  
> 


	2. The Q

**The Q**

 

Luc takes to Major Junior Hockey like he was born for it, like a car that’s finally getting to shift to 4th gear on the highway.  Jacks was worried, going into it, that he’d have to struggle to keep up, but it’s as easy to play hockey on a line with Luc in Baie Comeau as it was in Moncton.  

 

The biggest adjustment is that there’s so much _more_ hockey and so much less school.  Tutors and video classes, and no more school lunch times or pushing around in crowded hallways between the bells. Just hockey, and tutoring, and games two to three times a week.  

They both get points their first game—a beauty of a drop pass and the puck goes sailing right over the goalie’s shoulder.  The older guys rub their knuckles through their hair and slap their shoulders and say, “Look at these baby rookies, they deserve to pop those cherries, we got to find them some girls tonight”

Luc rolls his eyes and shrugs out from under Granger’s arm.  “Ugh.” he says. “We don’t need any girls from you, we do alright on our own.”

 

 

“You boys aren’t getting too wild are you, up there?” his mom asks on the phone one night, after they’ve been playing for about a month. “Your billet parents seemed a little lenient.”

“Mom.” Jacks rolls his eyes. “You know how Chants gets if he misses a five-thirty workout.  Believe me, we’re not doing anything wild.  It’s nothing but hockey and training and classes over video, and doing planks every morning at 5:45. We’re working hard.”

 

 

Their first game back in Moncton, late in November,  Jacks is surprised to see Mackenzi sitting in the stands, and a little sad, but not surprised, that Honoré isn’t there.  After the game, Mackenzi’s waiting around with their parents.  He kisses her on the cheek and she kisses him, briefly on the mouth, close lipped.  “Hi, babe,” she says and flutters big fake eyelashes at him.  

“Hey, Miss MerryMac,” Luc drawls, coming up behind him, and offers her a fistbump.  

“Chantal.  Lisa-Marie’s not here. She’s dating Ryan Beauvais.”

“‘kay” Luc answers, mild and unconcerned.  “You gettin’ dinner with us?”  

Jacks puts his hand on the small of Mac’s back on the way out to the car and leans over to whisper in her ear, “The fuck are you doing?”

She just shrugs a little. “Justin Aucoin has asked me out five times in the past two weeks.”

“Yeah, alright, you want to put some pics on insta or something?”

“Yes, please,” she says, faux-prim, and takes out her phone.   

“Wow. I’m so touched. And so happy to see you too.  Really, I missed you, Mackenzi, every day I think, wow, what is it that’s lacking in my life…”

Mac grins, the first real grin of the night from her, “Don’t be ridiculous, we text all the time. I can talk to you about books anywhere.  But now you’re here, you can be useful and look big and dumb and in love with me so that I can concentrate on AP government and getting out of  this shithole a year early.”

 

On the bus later that night, Granger claps him on the back and says. “Hey, was that your girl? I didn’t know you were dating someone, man. She’s a rocket”  

Jacks represses his groan.  “It’s… complicated.”

Granger makes a noise of sympathy. “Yeah, that long distance shit is always hard. Still! Lots of other bunnies in the sea!”

Luc punches him in the arm.  “Ouch. Jesus, Chantal. Whatever, she’s a… nice… girl… She looks very sweet.”

Luc snorts at that, but keeps looking at his phone. Jacks rolls his eyes.  

 

 

 

 

The bus rides out to Cape Breton are always brutally long.  Team dinner gets dispersed while they’re still on the road.   Jacks is tired of chicken.  Luc is probably incapable of getting tired of baked chicken, but he does look tired from all the bus travel, eyes drooping. “Do you want the tablet to watch something?” Jacks offers.  

“Nah, Oli,” Luc murmurs and then burrows around, rearranges Jacks arm so that it’s draped over him, his head on Jacks’ chest, “You can watch your nerd shit, ‘snice in the background.” He yawns into Jacks sweatshirt. “What’s Starbucks up to these days?”

Jacks tugs his hair. “It’s Starbuck. She’s the best pilot in the whole fleet.”

“Yeah,” Luc agrees, “it’s hot.”

Jacks rolls his eyes.  “You want one of the earbuds?”

“Sure.” Luc yawns again. “But I’m gonna fall asleep.”

“Kay,” Jacks murmurs, takes his right earbud out, slouches down and puts it in Luc’s ear, lets his hand linger over Luc’s jaw.  

“Is she gonna punch that dude in the face?” Luc murmurs

“Probably.”

“Good.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The older guys throw a party for them, before they leave for WJC, their two golden baby rookies, already on the Juniors roster their first year.  

Luc's drunk and ebullient, shirt off despite the two feet of snow on the ground, snapback backwards, shouting “HOLLA HOLLA HOLLA” along with Wiz Khalifa. Jacks is pretty sure this must be one of Luc’s playlist.

 

“ _WE DEM BOYZ!_ ” he shouts in Jacks ear, arm looped around Jacks’ neck as Jacks laughs at him.

“Yeah, Chants, we are, in fact, dem boys.”  He thinks it’s probably too loud for Chants to hear him, but Luc just squeezes him tighter, says, “Jacccckkkkkkksssss why don’t you love this song, it’s so much better than your awful metal shit. _We dem boyz_ , dude.”

Jacks rolls his eyes.  “I know we are, Chants. I don’t hate this song. I’m not dissing your soulmate, Wiz Khalifa.”

Luc swallows the last of whatever's in his solo cup, says, “Wiz Khalifa isn't my soulmate, Jacks, duh.”

“That so?”

Luc blinks at him, glassy eyed, flushed and drunk, “You're my soulmate, Jacks,” he says like Jacks is being particularly slow to grasp a play. “Duh, bro…”

Jacks feels the inside of his throat swell and ache, bottom drop out of his stomach. The playlist goes from Wiz Khalifa to Thunderheist. Jacks is now 100% sure it's Luc's playlist.  

 

“Oh shit,” Luc moans low and lusty, “I fucking love this song too. Kerri!” He lurches an arm out fingers catching in Kerri’s belt loops as she passes by them, “Kerri, bébé.”

Kerri laughs, flicks her hair, “You never called me back, Chantal.”

Luc slides his hand from her belt loops down her ass a little, blinks at her, the same confused pretty look he'd given Jacks a moment ago, “I… did I, I mean, did I say I’d call?” he asks. Somehow makes it sound like an earnest question, not patronizing or douchey.  

Kerris mouth falls open in surprise and she pauses for a second before finally saying, “You didn't, actually.” She laughs, pulls him to her.  

“You're the biggest asshole I've ever met in my life,” Jacks says.

Luc just grins. “Dance with us, Jacks, you know I love this song.”

“There’s no one dancing, Chants,” Kerri says, “this isn’t a dancing party.”   

Luc blinks, a slow flutter of eyelashes that’s almost coy. “We could go dance somewhere private.” Kerri’s somehow maneuvered herself around so that she’s in between them, Luc pushing her up against Jacks’ chest, Luc’s hands on her hips, inches from Jacks’.  She leans back into him, pressing her ass against him.  Jacks grits his teeth and tries to keep himself at a respectful semi-chub, despite the heady combination of friction against his dick, and Luc’s hand around his biceps, eyes smiling over her head, locked with his own.  

“Okay,” she says, kissing Luc, “let's go dance somewhere private,” then, leaning her head back to look at Jacks behind her, “you’re coming too, right?”

“Oh!” Luc says. “Oh! Hey! Jacks! You could come with us!”

Jesus fucking christ.  

“No,” Jacks says, a little sharper than he means to, and regrets it immediately.  He’s a teenage dude.  He’s not supposed to turn down sex, even threesome sex, with girls as hot as Kerri.  “I mean… Not tonight, at least,” he finishes weakly, because he can’t. He can’t.  He can’t no homo his way through making sure their dicks never touch and that his eyes never drift too far below Luc’s waist, but don’t linger on Luc’s eyes either, staring at a girl he doesn’t give a shit about, pretending that he… he can’t.  It’s too much and it’d be a fucking disaster.  

Luc shrugs and says, “No worries, c’mon, Ker, show me someplace quiet,” punches Jacks’ shoulder companionably, and gets led off by his hand to another room.  

 

 

 

**

  
  
  


They win gold at World Juniors.  Jacks has been at least half hard in his cup ever since he scored late in the 3rd and Luc crushed him against the glass in a celly, face buried in his neck as he shouted into his skin, “Such a fucking beauty, Jacks, such a fucking beauty!”

Now, in the locker room, Luc is wet with champagne and gatorade, arm around Jacks—hand digging into his side in a firm grip, nose pressed against Jacks’ cheek, grinning and too warm.   

This is punishment. Jacks did something awful in a past life and his sentence is living this one in love with a straight boy. It’s a punishment, except everything about Luc always seems like a gift.  

Jacks watches him dance at the club with some local girl in one of those kind of skirts that most looks like she wrapped a scarf around her waist.  The hem of the skirt just barely covers her ass. Luc is a good dancer. A _surprisingly_ good dancer, but maybe not surprising, because Luc is good at anything that has him wholly centered and present in his body, and indifferent to most things that don’t.  He’s a good enough dancer that he’s even okay through this weird European house techno shit that is playing, grinding up on the girl, one hand skirting at the edge of her tiny, tiny skirt before it finally slips up it.  

 

Jacks looks away and sees Larsson standing there by a hallway that probably leads to some bathrooms. Larsson jerks his head once then disappears. Jacks follows.

 

 

As soon as the bathroom door swings shut behind him, Larsson has him up against the wall in a bruising kiss.  

“Fuck,” Larsson breathes, a few long moments later, pulling away, and Jacks tries to catch his breath. “There’s that mouth. Been thinking about it ever since the trainer’s room. Who taught you to suck cock so good, Jackson?”

“Just naturally talented, I guess,” Jacks drawls to cover how much his heart is beating in his chest, how anxious and reckless everything about this makes him feel.  

The training room… had been a mistake. But it’d been such a surprise to get noticed so frankly, by another hockey player, to have someone so brazenly… In a training room. With no… pretense or “buddies” or no homo.  Jacks knows that’s a thing sometimes, maybe. Maybe some guys think there’s something like that with him and Chants, but it’s, it has to be a certain way or it’s not okay.  It has to not matter. Whatever it is Larsson’s doing is… not the same. It’s just. The rush of knowing there’s someone else, _someone like him,_ and Larsson, so close to his own draft, and ranked to go high in it.  Someone else, gay maybe in the NHL.  Bold, and appreciative and not afraid to look, to touch Jacks and.

Jacks had wanted to tell Chants about it.  Go back to their room and say, “I just traded orgasms with Erik Larsson, #7, Team Sweden, probable first round draft pick this summer.”  But. He couldn’t. Obviously. Instead he just.  Well, it doesn’t matter.  But it would have been fun, nice, to get to share that. And then they’d played Sweden in the Semifinals and well.  Yeah he really shouldn’t have done that. Because just because Larsson is, whatever. Not straight. Doesn’t mean he’s not an asshole.  

Jacks had thought maybe, if Larsson was like him he probably wouldn’t… There’d be some sort of mutual, tacit agreement to not talk about it and definitely not on the ice. But. Well, he was wrong, obviously. Larsson is an asshole, sexual preference has nothing to do that particular personality trait.  Jacks doesn’t know why he was surprised by that. It’s not like he didn’t know it.  Because, well, hockey’s hockey.  And he shouldn’t have been surprised and just because there’s some other dude out there in the game who smiled at him in an empty trainer’s room, eyes sweeping over Jacks’ biceps and the flush of his face, brushed Jacks’ hair off his forehead, and dragged his hand over Jacks’ shoulder, kissed him sweet and dirty and whispered stuff in Swedish doesn’t meant that they had any sort of… bond… or that the game was any less the game, and that Larsson was going to want to win any less and.  Well.

And once Larsson had noticed he was touchy about it, it’d only made him worse. And there wasn’t really a time Jacks wasn’t on the ice with Chants and if Chants heard him.  

“Shit,” Larsson had whispered, while they lined up on the faceoff circle, “You really don’t want Chantal to hear me talking about you, huh, he really doesn’t know? Your skates have been tied together this long and he doesn’t know what a needy little—” and then linesman had dropped the puck, Jacks had lost the faceoff, and Sweden scored on their play.  

 

“Jackson!” Coach had yelled at him on the bench. “Where the fuck has your head gone? Get your fucking head in the game or go home. This is Worlds semifinals, not your holiday pond hockey game.”

  
  
  
  
Larsson’s hand’s working at his belt, his mouth at Jacks’ jaw.  And Jacks needs to probably not be doing this but Larsson’s shoulders are firm, and his thighs are… and his hair’s long and… he looks a little like the bassist from this band fro—

“C’mon,” Larsson says, pushing down on his shoulder to get him on his knees, “hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.”

Which okay, no. Actually. No. Chants gets to say dumb shit like that to him. Larsson definitely fucking doesn’t. Especially not here. Especially when Jacks _won_.  

Jacks shrugs his hand off his shoulder and says, “What’s that say about your work ethic then, Larsson, since we’re the ones taking home gold tonight?”

“Fuck you, Jackson,” Larsson snaps, “you had puck luck in your favor all that game and your buddy Chantal is a sneaky fucking—”

“Just because he embarrassed you in your 2nd shitty fucking turnover of the night—”

And Larsson punches him.  

Which is not that surprising really.  It doesn’t connect fully; Jacks moves his head, dodges about half, takes the other half on a glancing blow on his jaw, shoves Larsson back and throws a punch of his own, which Larsson blocks—and then the door opens and they leap apart about five feet.  Jacks is wiping the back of his hand across his face when he realizes it’s Chants.

Fuck this whole entire night.  
  


  
  
  


He shouldn't have done that. He should not have done that—any of that, with Larsson. It's risky enough trying to find hookups in Quebec—risky enough that he hasn't tried. The more he and Luc wind up on TSN clips, the more like it is that someone will recognize him, sell the story to… God knows who. Tell his team. Ruin his life. But Larsson. Fuck. No way, barring some sort of freak accident, Larsson doesn't make it to the NHL. He's going to be playing with Jacks on the same league, he could tell… Anyone… Deadspin. Jacks’ future teammates, his coach, fuck, Jacks could lose his contract, lose the Room, get traded and sent down and then never get to… Get to. Get to play hockey. With Luc. Shit. Shit. Shit.   

 

He’s hovering on the verge of a low-key panic attack their whole flight home, snippy with Luc and everyone else on the team despite their W, keeps his headphones on, silent and antisocial, but it’s all he can do to keep his Freaking Out inside and talking to anyone seems like a great way for it to just… explode.  

 

He thinks eventually the panicky feeling will go away, but it doesn’t.  O’Rear says something to him during a faceoff in their first game back, something about him and Luc, and he almost breaks his stick going for the puck, he’s gripping so tight.  He can’t get his head straight, and to make matters worse, there’s an unfortunate string of parties or lower key gatherings every weekend, Luc winding up in the bathroom getting his dick sucked at almost every one of them, like the Universe wants Jacks to never forget his shitty mistakes.  

 

He wishes he could talk to Luc about it.  That’s what he’s done about… every other single thing that’s ever bothered him.  But he can’t. Obviously. And it just... It fucking sucks, being alone.  He can talk to people online, some, when he’s not paranoid Luc’s looking over his shoulder.  But that’s… It’s helpful sometimes, about a lot of things, but he can’t talk too much about the whole closet/sports thing, because they all know he’s from Canada, and that he moved, and there’s only one real sport that counts in Canada, and if he gives out too much info people might start connecting the dots.  It just. It’s lonely. And it fucking sucks.  

 

 

**

 

  
  


Jacks storms out of a house party without his coat, punches the tile in the shower, goes to bed with his headphones in, tears in his eyes. It’s hours before Luc gets home, smelling like beer and perfume and pussy. Jacks pretends to be asleep, but of course Luc, the fucking weirdo, doesn’t fall for it.  Just talks into the night and drags Jacks’ biggest secret out of him into the darkness like it’s nothing, like he’s been wrapping himself around every other part of Jacks since the first time they met and Jacks saw a boy with kind brown eyes and a smile that made his heart race and asked him he wanted to practice faceoffs.  

Jacks chokes out his biggest secret, feeling open and exposed even under the shelter of his covers and the blanket of the darkness, and Luc says, “Okay.”  Just like that. Then gets his feelings half-hurt, about Jacks not telling him sooner, for Jacks maybe having a secret at all, like the infuriating, entitled little shit that he is.  It makes Jacks laugh, startled and shocky and relieved. Nothing ever changes.  The world is still spinning on its axis and Luc Chantal still thinks he has the same rights to every atom of Jacks being he’s always had.   

And then, quiet and introspective in a way Luc so seldom is anymore, he says, “Like, all the things, all the things we said we were going to do, together, all the things we ARE going to do, I just… I guess I just promise that I’m going to do it, ask to still be worthy of it, you know, still deserving to have you and hockey.”

 

 

Honoré is wrong of course.  Luc might never want to marry Jacks, hold his hand at the farmer’s markets on Sundays and retire to a house on a lake, get a golden retriever and raise a bunch of adopted hockey babies while wearing soft cardigans and doing the crossword puzzle together and making home DIY project lists with Jacks the way Jacks sometimes lets himself daydream when he really feels like torturing himself, but he does love him. There’s no one, really, ever in the world who’s going to love Jacks the way Luc Chantal does, and there’s no way Jacks is ever going to love anyone else as much as he loves Luc, either.  It hurts, a little bit to think about, but it’s a gift, to know that, and to know that it’s going to be enough.  He doesn’t know where it’s going to take them, the draft, the NHL, but he knows, lying there in the dark, the ghost of Luc’s word’s hanging in the air, that they’re going to figure it out together.  

 

 

 

 

 

If he’s honest, the rational part of his brain already knew Luc wasn’t a homophobe, had known that Luc would, at least nominally, be fine with Jacks being gay.  As much as the irrational part of him, the part that had been _hiding_ since forever, could make worse-case scenarios where Luc called him names, pushed him away with scorn, Jacks knew that wasn’t Luc.  Just like he knew that Luc wasn’t really anything like the twisted part of him that kept a few saved clips and gifs of Fraternity X vids buried deep in his laptop for when he wanted it to _hurt_ as much as his heart hurt, and hoped when Luc found out he’d push Jacks to his knees, call him names while using his mouth whenever he wanted.  Luc wasn’t like that, didn’t really have a cruel bone in his body, for all his ruthlessness on the ice, but at least, if he were, Jacks would know the taste of him, the pleasure of pleasing him.  

But, no, when he was calm and thinking with his brain, he knew neither of those scenarios were the real threat.  The real thing he feared was… Luc who said it was fine, who smiled and called Jacks his best friend, his best bro, was a _good ally_ , but stopped touching him, stopped sitting so close, still smiled at him, but pulled away, because it was _different_ now.  

 

Luc wakes him up the morning after their talk by throwing himself on Jacks’ bed, flicks his ear while they’re stretching, slaps his ass in congratulations when he improves his splits on their morning 8k, drops his clothes onto their floor in their room with the same unconcern for Jacks’ presence, scratches his balls and yawns like it's any other Sunday morning.

 

 

 

Jacks has been preparing for the questions, but the first one Luc asks catches him off guard.  Luc’s plowing his way through an omelet, swallows and pauses just long enough to point his fork at Jacks and asks, “So wait, where’s all your real porn?”

“What?” Jacks chokes out, trying not to swallow waffle down the wrong pipe.  Their billet family are all standing out in the backyard talking with some cousins who have stopped by. Luc has never had any concept of discretion or shame and the Chantals never taught him not to talk about dicks at the breakfast table.

“Well, I mean, obviously all that shitty porn on your laptop isn’t your actual porn. And I mean, frankly, bro, I’m glad.  I was worried for your taste.”

Jacks rolls his eyes but fishes his laptop out from under their futon after they finish eating and head back upstairs, shows Luc the file path, the folder titled “Star Wars PDFs.”  His heart is beating in his chest and his hand is shaking just a little as he clicks on it, but he does a pretty good job of not letting it show, he thinks.   

Luc laughs. “Yeah, I wasn’t going to look there, eh? Fucking nerd,” and ruffles his hair.

Jacks opens the folder and the little thumbnails of videos appear, but Luc doesn’t click any of them, doesn’t even really seem to be looking at them. “Cool,” he says, grinning at Jacks, and Jacks heart slows down a little, though he’s not sure whether this relief is in Luc’s easy smile, or the lack of impending mortification that would come from Luc seeing a curated compilation of dark haired Sean Cody actors in generic looking locker room porn settings, wearing underarmor and shoulder pads and trading blowjobs with backwards snapbacks.  

 

 

 

“Larsson,” Luc says out of nowhere, a couple of weeks later, when they’re dumping their bags on the floor of a hotel room in Halifax.  “At Worlds, that was totally, you know. That was you and him like… I cockblocked you that night.”

“Yeah,” Jacks says and sits down on the bed closest to the door.  

“He’s an asshole,”  Luc says throwing himself down on mattress next to him.  

“I mean, no argument from me there.” Luc’s shirt has ridden up and he’s scratching his belly a little, one arm tucked behind his head.  He tilts his head to Jacks and giving him a look that says, “really?”

“Like, seriously, an asshole, dude,” Luc repeats.

“I know.”

“I mean like… Nilsson _maybe_ if you’re into the Swede thing.  He seems like a good dude.  Nice pokecheck. Good in the net. But like, you know.  A good dude.”

“I’m not… that’s not… Luc.  Nilsson isn’t into dudes.” At least, he’s probably not. If he is, he wasn’t hitting on Jacks.  “I don’t give a shit if Larsson is an asshole, I’m not marrying him or something. It’s not like there’s a plethora of gay dudes at the WJC, all wearing handkerchiefs to let you know what they’re into or something, and you just get to pick the nicest one.”

“Hm,” Luc says, “hey, handkerchiefs would be such a good idea!”

“It’s been thought of before.” Jacks rolls his eyes.  

“He’s an asshole,” Luc repeats a third time. “I don’t like him.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Jacks says and pinches Luc’s side.  Luc yelps and rolls over to tackle him, and the next 10 minutes are filled with shouting, and giggling, and no more talk of Erik fucking Larsson.  

  
  
  


Jacks wakes three mornings later, after a bad loss to the Frontenacs. They don’t share a bed quite as often as they used to when they were nine or ten, but Luc tends to wind up in Jacks’ bed after most really rough games. Jacks wakes hard and horny and his dick is perfectly nestled up against’ Luc’s boxer-clad ass.  It’s not the first time he’s ever woken up with his boner touching Luc, by far, but it’s the first time since Jacks came out to him. He’s already practicing excuses but Luc just yawns and sniffs and rolls away a little, sits up and knuckles his eyes before standing.  He’s hard himself, fabric of boxers tenting out, but totally unconcerned by it.  It shouldn’t surprise him.  Luc Chantal has never once been embarrassed by biology. Jacks watches as Luc grabs sweatpants and a t-shirt from a drawer and heads to the shower still half asleep.

He waits until he hears the shower turn on before he shoves a hand down his shorts.  It takes five strokes, maybe, thinking of the sleep-warm smell of Luc, the curve of his ass, the perfect plane of his back, the tousle of his hair, the absent minded way Luc had grabbed himself through his boxers while riffling through his closet.  He comes imagining Luc, face disinterested and bored, gesturing at his dick and saying, “Well, are you going take care of it or not?” Feels discombobulated and frustrated, even after coming.  He grabs a sock from the floor, wipes himself off and tosses it into the hamper.

 

Later that afternoon they’re at a Timmy’s and Luc is typing away, working on his lit essay for school, grouchy to actually be forced to do homework.

“So, look,” Jacks starts, “About this morning.”

Luc peels his headphones off and cocks his head to one side.  “What about this morning?”

Jacks can feel himself blush.  “I just… I just wanted to make sure I didn’t make you uncomfortable. When we… when we woke up.”

Luc looks unimpressed. “Dudes get morning wood because their bladders fill up overnight and put pressure on the prostate and like various, vascular things.” He takes a sip of his coffee and says, “Your bladder suddenly shift to somewhere else in your body just because you like sucking dick?”

“Jesus Christ, Luc, shut up,” Jacks hisses, but there’s nobody around them, they’re off in an empty corner, no one but them, their school work, and an unimpressive view of the parking lot.

Luc raises an eyebrow and looks like he actually expects an answer.

“No, of course not,” he huffs.

“So you’re sorry why?”

“I just. I know it’s probably different now that…”

Luc snorts. “Sorry, bro, it’s the exact same dick you’ve always had.  Look, shut up about your boner, nobody cares.  Can you read over this paragraph for me? I fucking hate writing.”

Jacks scrunches his nose, glances at the laptop turned towards him.  “Luc, I can’t read that.”

“You’ve taken French for 10 years, asshole. You’ve _gotten As_ in French for 10 years.  I know you can fucking read it, you might not be able to speak it for shit, which would get better, by the way, if you'd just loosen the fuck up about it and jaz avec moi, but what the fuck ever.”

Jacks groans and pulls the laptop towards him.

Luc folds his arms up, hands stuck under his armpits, slouched down in his seat so his feet are under Jacks’ chair, knees knocking against Jacks’. “I fucking hate writing” he huffs. “It’s dumb, why do I have to do this shit.”

“Something could happen and you could wind up not being able to play anymore.”  An old argument that Jacks puts less than zero effort in, but still feels like he has to pay lip service to. Anyway, anything he’s said on the subject has already been said ten times more often by Luc’s parents, the source of the only real friction Luc’s ever had with his family.

“If I can’t play hockey, what am I going to do besides teach people to play hockey? Or teach people to work out.”  A response that’s just as route.

“Or you could learn to write so that when you write your first _Players Tribune_ article you don’t sound like an idiot.”

“Oh,” Luc says. “Yeah, alright.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jacks is trying to practice… openness.  It’s an effort, to remind himself that he doesn’t have to hide things, at least not from Luc anymore.  That he can just… “You know, secrets are bad for line chemistry,” Luc told him, earnest and ridiculous.  Luc’s terrible at any sort of secret, only knows how to lie by telling the truth.  

He starts by making an online purchase, something he’d always been afraid to do before, because Luc thinks all packages ought to be opened together, regardless of which one of them they’re addressed to.  

“Hey,” Jacks says “I just ordered some shit from Amazon.”

“’kay”  Luc answers without looking up.  

“Don’t mess with it or open it,” Jacks continues.

That gets Luc looking his way.  “’kay. Why not?”

“It’s gay shit.”

“Oh,” Luc goes back to juggling the puck with his stick.  “Yeah. That’s cool.”

“This your shit?” Luc drops an unopened Amazon box in Jacks’ lap 4 days later.

“Oh. Yeah.”

“Mail dude left it on the step. You gonna open it.”

“Not in front of you. You wanna fuck off for a little while?”

Luc goes a little pink over the bridge of his nose, but grins.  “Sure, bro.”  Jacks watches him zip up his hoodie, pull on a toque, “I’ll just go see Marts for a couple hours, let me know when you’re… _done._ ” inflection on the last word completely filthy.

Jacks rolls his eyes but can feel the blush creeping down his chest.  “Go away, asshole.”

“Sure.” Luc smirks and heads out the door, making a rude gesture on his way out.  Jacks flicks him off.  He waits until he can actually see Luc walking down the street before he actually opens the package.

 

 

 

 

It took him a while to learn to mimic the way chirps roll off Luc’s back like water.  That’s not to say Luc’s unchirpable, but most of the shit guys say just makes him laugh. The luxury, basically, of knowing it’s all untrue.  And of being, naturally, the sort of asshole, even from when he was a kid, whose instinct when someone is talking shit, or booing, has always been to look over at Jacks and say, “Wow, they’re pretty pissed at us, we must be pretty good, eh? Wanna go make ‘em cry s’more, Oli?”  

Jacks doesn’t come by it naturally, has had to learn to channel the disaffected ennui of any number of jaded metal stars leaning apathetically against concrete walls on album covers to fake his way through his own hockey callouses, that ability Luc has always had to grin and say, “Fuck ‘em, let’s ruin their night,” every time they walk into a hostile barn, or some parent from an opposing team calls them the nastiest shit Jacks has ever heard.  He had to train himself to think like that, and for a while it only worked half way, lasted only long enough until he could get home and turn the volume up in his headphones until his head reverberated with guitar riffs, and his hands stopped shaking after he was off the ice.  But it’s nice, the moment the center from St. Johns talks shit in the faceoff circle, and Jacks manages to just roll his eyes and say “Yeah, yeah, Anders. That’s not what your mom was telling me last night,” like some part of his brain isn't shrieking.  

It’s weak. Like, the weakest of chirps, a yo momma joke, but it works, and it’s a revelation to his twelve year old self.  A week later when the Frederickton defense tries to chirp him, Jacks is brave enough to accompany the eyeroll with a “You wish, Moreau, stop daydreaming about my dick and try to remember how to play hockey.”  

 

By the time they’re in the Q, Jacks has perfected the delivery, as good at it as Luc is. What’s he’s _not_ prepared for, is the first time he responds back with a roll of his eyes and “If you're that concerned about my cocksucking skills, Fortin, you can hit me up later,” voice heavy with sarcasm and gets not a “fuck you” but Fortin going bright red, and flubbing the faceoff so badly Luc scores by the crease 3.6 seconds later.  

“Seriously?”  Jacks asks, incredulous as he drifts by Fortin on the way to the Drakkar bench.    And then, because Fortin’s flushed, with the wings of his salad poking out from his helmet and broad shoulders. “Okay.”

After the game Jacks finds Fortin lingering around the guest locker room door looking hopeful, and Luc stands guard outside a little used single occupancy bathroom in the back hall near where they normally play two-touch.  

 

 

  


Jacks’ and Luc’s parents come up to Parents Weekend. There's a big parents’ dinner and Macner and Gerard get sucked into conversation with Luc’s dad, who’s telling field stories about getting stalked by a grizzly for five days while trying to film Whooping Crane migrations in the Northwest territories last summer.  

“Your dad knows a shit ton about birds,” Girard says the next day at team breakfast and it takes Jacks five whole seconds to realize he’s a) talking to him and b) talking about Luc’s dad.  

Jacks opens his mouth to correct him, but Gerard carries on with, “Like, his camping stories are pretty badass. Do you think that’s where Luc gets his ‘don’t fuck with me face’ from? Like his dad could fight a _bear_.”  

 

Jacks thinks about Luc’s quiet, watchful father with his spectacles and tea and says, “No, that face comes entirely from his mom.”

“Shit,” Girard says looking over to where Dr. Luc’s Mom is talking to a few of the other parents, “do you think she could fight a bear?”

“She digs up human bones for a living,” Jacks offers.

“Your family’s wild, even your mom-mom has crazy ER stories,” Gerard says. “Like, I’m so envious. My dad’s an accountant. The coolest thing he’s ever done is go golfing.”

  


 

 

 

Jacks thought Luc during playoffs in midgets was… intense, but it’s nothing like Luc during their first playoffs in the Q.  On a Thursday he keeps Jacks on the ice for 2 hours after their practice ended, practicing blind passes.  Beliveau had stayed with them for the first hour but eventually called it for the day.  In the locker room, they cool down on bikes, and stretch and Luc heads off to the shower. Jacks stays on the mat for a few minutes longer, while he tries to talk his legs into moving again.  He’s got his eyes closed, hears a polite cough, and when he opens them, Martin is standing over top of him, staring down.  

“Hey, Marts.”

“I’m wearing my A right now, Jackson.” Martin crouches down next to him.

“ ‘kay”

“Coach is going to start hiding his skates if he doesn’t chill the fuck out and let his body rest.”

Jacks winces.

“And if he yells at Cap again like he did last night on the bench, he’s gonna get punched. Your boy’s going to make a great captain someday, but he’s not captain right now, he’s a rookie, and he doesn’t always know best.  Mac’s willing to put up with a lot, especially from a guy who brings so much to the table, but he needs to keep his fucking mouth shut sometimes.”

Jacks winces again, and says “Yeah… I’ll… I’ll take care of it.”

Martin eyes him speculatively  “Honestly I’m not sure why you haven’t before now. Like shit, I don’t know what it is you do, like… suck his brain out through his dick so he’ll sleep for the next 24 hours, or just like feed him a deep-fried cheeseburger and then drug his drink so he’ll sleep, but just… work your Luc Chantal magic, okay.”

Jacks can feel himself flush “I don’t… Yeah. I.  I mean, I guess I just got caught up in my own… I mean, first time Juniors playoffs for me too… I…”

“Oh, hey,” Mart says, eyes suddenly soft, “I know, kid.  It’s okay. You’re doing really good, you’re play’s been right on.  Proud as fuck of you. I know it can be a lot you’re first post-season, but you’re handling it like a champ.”  

“Thanks, Marts.”  

Marts smacks him on the shoulder, squeezing for a second and giving him a shake.  “You’re doing good, Jacks.  Take care of your boy and he’ll be doing good too, and we’ll see about wrapping this season up with the W, eh?”

“Yeah, Marts. Thanks.”

  


The door is just swinging shut behind Marts when Luc wanders out of the shower in his towel.  “You’re not even on your way to shower yet?” he asks. “Hurry up, dude, we got shit to do. Stop lying around.”

 

Mac isn’t the only one who’s going to punch him.

 

He lied to Marts, a little.  The pace of playoffs at a higher level is a lot to adjust to.  But that doesn’t mean he hadn’t noticed the grooves of Luc’s abs becoming even more pronounced, the sharp blades of his cheekbones sticking out.  The fact that Luc’s been… well.  It’s not that Luc ever eats _less_.  He’s an athlete. He knows he has to fuel his body, and he’s _paranoid_ about “losing mass” by which he only ever means muscle mass. Luc eats regularly, and a lot, on the “protein every two hours” diet basically since he first found his way to _Men’s Health_ or LiveStrong.  It’s just that when Luc is relaxed, loose, at peace with the world around him, he eats fairly normally. Lets himself have cheat meals. Doesn’t use his macros as anything other than rough guidelines to make sure he’s getting enough of what he needs. And when Luc is… tense, anxious, uncertain about something or struggling for control, he starts “tweaking” things in his nutrition plan, sticking to it more rigidly, until eventually he’s just eating grilled chicken, quinoa and broccoli for every meal.  

 

It’s not that Jack's hasn't noticed, it's not that he hasn't been worried. It's just that...What he used to do, when that was starting to edge towards too much, might...  not. It might not work now. Now that Luc knows about Jacks. Maybe.

Whatever. He needs to nut up and get over it and just do it.

 

 

The key to Luc is just understanding how his brain works.  Once you know that Luc eats his grandmother’s tourtiere and various baked goods without qualm on Christmas because _that’s what people do_ _on Christmas_ then Luc’s refusal to drink soda, because of reasons having to do with corn syrup and glucose spikes and sugar related inflammation and some article he read from The Mayo Clinic about joint health that made an overly large impression on his young mind make sense, even when paired with the fact that Luc drinks Gatorade as freely as any other athlete, doesn’t count the beer drank via keg stand or shotgun or beer pong, despite it having just as much sugar.  

 

Back at their billet house Luc says, “Hey, I wanna talk about some stuff for power plays and then maybe we can practice shots in the yard.”

 

And Jacks takes a big breath and says, “Sure. Uh, but first do you wanna go to Le Frigo?”

“What?” Luc asks, distracted and staring at some index cards of plays that he’s organizing on their desk. “Not really. Hey come sit down here. That play you set up with Beliveau down by the half boards and the left D at the—”

“Luc.” Jacks says, “Luc, I’ve had a shitty day.  I have a headache.  That check up against the gate last night hurts like fuck every time I breathe.” (Okay this is a slight exaggeration but what Luc doesn’t know not only won’t hurt him, but will be good for him.)  “I need a fucking break.  If I look at any more fucking index cards or go over any more tape tonight I’m going to puke.”  He lets his voice break, a little, in the last sentence, weary and defeated and small.  

 

There are constants in the world.  Athletes drink Gatorade.  Guys in Junior hockey “work hard and play hard,” a douchebag phrase that translates to “guys in Junior Hockey drink a lot.” And Luc and Jacks have been going to get ice cream together since they were in mite. Even after The Great Ice Cream Negotiations of four summers ago, which had involved five days of heated debate, tears, Jacks dragging receipts out of the internet like bullshit articles about Vitamin D and Calcium that had ultimately been useless and left Luc unswayed and Luc citing the actual fucking American Heart Association.

Jacks had won though, ultimately, a hashed out treaty that had included the paragraph “Trips to the ice-cream stand, for the purpose of ‘summer bulking’ are sanctioned once per week for the duration of the off-season, where the off-season is defined as the period beginning at the end of both parties playoff season(s) and ending two weeks prior to the next season’s training camp. Personal early exit to off-season or late entrance into team schedule at start of year due to injury does not count as ‘off season’ for the purposes of this contract. Occasional ice-cream days during the season, including all play-off series, are not only allowed and deemed unharmful to both aforementioned players, but to be beneficial to the mental health and welfare of both parties, under the assumption that benefits gathered from peace of mind, relaxation and personal bonding time (see Appendix A reference A Study in Self Care, by _____, ref 2021,) exceeds harmful effects of dairy fats, cholesterol and systemic glucose spikes and inflammation due to sucrose (see Appendix B, reference A, ‘Sugar linked to_______’.   .” A contract had been typed up and notarized by Luc’s neighbor who was an attorney, and who regarded them with a bemused tolerance and was always “happy to expand my resume.”   

There’s a second delay, that just makes it more obvious to watch.  The ripple through Luc as every ounce of concentration and focus that been trained on hockey shifts, entirely, to Jacks.  

“Jacks,” Luc says, soft, turning to him to face him completely. “Dude. I’m sorry. You should have said something.”

“I did.” Because the important thing, right now, is to lay on the guilt trip, just a little, or the focus isn’t going to last.  He’ll feel guilty about it later.

Luc winces. “Shit. Bro. Désolé. C’mon yeah, let’s go.  Do you want to go to Le Frigo or Pignon Glacé?”

“Either,” Jacks says and then, “Le Frigo.”  

“K,” Luc says, and he’s already lifting his keys. He heards Jacks out the door, hand soft and gentle on Jacks’ side, right over the bruise from the check last night, thumb  rubbing soft soothing circles over it.  Jacks is going to hell.

 

Jacks orders a giant sundae.  He orders flavors he knows Luc likes.  Luc pays.  Jacks gets two spoons.  He puts one in Luc’s hand and Luc gives him _a look_ that says he knows, sort of, what Jacks is doing but he squishes in next to Jacks in a tiny booth, instead of sitting across from him.  Jacks starts eating because he legitimately loves ice cream, and Luc wiggles until he’s wedged up underneath in the crook of Jacks’ shoulder.  It is, objectively, incredibly gay, and very much like a date. It’s always been incredibly like a date, even the last time, back in Moncton, when Luc had been talking about Lisa-Marie and the general expectation among the school that they were or should be “dating” and his general mystification of what that meant, and Luc had poked his spoon sullenly at the scoop of strawberry ice cream and said “I don’t even know why the fuck people even _like_ dating. Like what is even the point? What do people even _do_?” and Jacks had kicked Luc in the shin under the table and said “You could take her to get ice cream. That’s a date thing,” and Luc had wrinkled his nose and said “Ewww.”

Jacks had said, “You’re eating ice cream right now, why are you saying ew?” and Luc had said “Yeah I’m eating ice cream _with you_.  That’s different.  Why the fuck would I want to take Lisa-Marie here? Like why would that be a date?” And Jacks had shut his mouth because he couldn’t find any answer to that question that wasn’t incriminating.      

 

Jacks doesn’t know why he’d been nervous of doing this part this time, except he guess he’d been worried that Luc might suddenly _notice_ that sharing a sundae with another dude is not something a lot of guys do after a certain age. Especially wedged up next to each other, instead of sitting across from each other.  It doesn’t matter. It’s not a realization that’s ever going to come to Luc, he doesn’t think. Luc eats about 1/4th before he finally puts down his spoon and says, “If I eat any more, Jacks, I’m going to start feeling sick.”  

Jacks shrugs.  The point is never to make Luc feel _worse_. He’d ate more than he expected, honestly.

In the walk out to the car, Jacks says, “Thanks, I feel a little better.” and Luc smiles at him.

 

By the time they get back to their billet, it’s close to 3, and Jacks is tired, and close to falling into an ice-cream coma.  “Nap,” he says, and herds Luc up the stairs, away from sticks, or pucks, past the index cards and onto the bed.  “Shoes off”

“I kinda wanted to…” Luc starts to protest

“I need a nap, Luc. My side hurts. Please lie down next to me, I can lean on you and it’s more comfortable for my side and my hip.”  

“Oh,” Luc says, soft, “okay,” and kicks his shoes off.

 

Jacks kicks his own shoes off and arranges himself halfway on top of Luc in a way that, honestly, does make his side ache a little less.  “Sleep,” he says and does so himself.  

 

When he wakes up 4 hours later, Luc is still asleep, drooling onto Jacks’ t-shirt, and their billet mom is shouting up the steps that it’s dinner time.  

“God, that smells good,” Luc says walking down the steps. “I’m fucking starving.”

 

“The omega 3s are good for you,” Jacks says as he puts a third piece of salmon on Luc’s plate.  “And eat your rice.” Luc still looks sleep warm and soft and mussed and doesn’t protest.  

 

He doesn’t protest when Jacks herds them both back upstairs after dinner and washing the dishes either, and he doesn’t protest when Jacks changes into sleep pants, takes two advil with a glass of water because his side really does hurt some, and says, “I don’t give a shit if it’s 8:30, I’m going to sleep, come be a hot water bottle again.”

10 minutes later, Luc says, into Jacks’ shoulder as Jacks is just about to nod off, “Coach says we shouldn’t come to morning skate tomorrow, he wants to rest my legs.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean it’s bullshit. My legs are fine and we need to go over those plays he had us running in practice. I know you, me, and Bel went over them yesterday but we didn’t have D with us to practice the whole thing, and I just think—”

“Luc.”

“What?”

“We’re sleeping in tomorrow so that our muscles can reknit new muscle, and then you’re going to make me a giant omelet for breakfast because you’re that great of a dude, and then we can sit and talk about the plays some if you want over lunch with Ben and Logan and it’ll be fine.”

There’s a long tense pause.  Jacks wraps his arm around Luc a little more firmly.

“You think?” Luc finally says, soft.

“Yeah, I know. We practiced it a lot today, but sometimes people need time to rest so that the muscle memory can like… soak in and absorb.”

“Okay.”

“Luc.”

“Go to fucking sleep.”

 

 

 

 

 

They win and they win, but they don’t win the Memorial Cup.  It’s a close thing, though.  “Next year, boys,” Marts says to Jacks and Luc, arms around them in the too sickeningly quiet locker room, “next year.”

 

The burn and shame and heartbreak of the loss makes Jacks sick.  But however bad he’s feeling about it, Luc… takes losses harder.  They teach you even from the beginning, back when they start teaching you visualization, to visualize failing, so that you can visualize getting back up. Going forward.  But Luc doesn’t… he’s always refused to do that.  “You can’t admit the possibility,” Luc told him once. “There can’t be a shadow of doubt, you can’t _entertain the idea_ of failure, it only gives it strength. It only lessens your will.”  Luc has no setting except offense.  If he’s on the ice, he’s playing as hard as he can.  If there’s a second left in the clock, Luc is still trying to score.  But that just means that when losses do happen, he takes them… Hard. Devastatingly.

 

Luc’s wound tight, silent, jaw clenched, eyes fixed in some middle distance of self-blame, biking furiously, even though most people have already headed to the shower. Marts, already showered, heads toward him, but Jacks intercepts with a quick shake of his head and a mouthed “I got it.”   

 

“Come on, bud,” Jacks says, and pulls him off pushes him into the mat room.  Luc doesn’t really acknowledge him much until Jacks pushes him down onto the mat. Then his eyes snap up to Jacks’, angry.  

“Come on,” Jacks says, “let’s go” and gets Luc in a hold.  It takes Luc about a second and a half to start fighting back.  Jacks has some weight on him, especially this late in the season, but Luc has a sort of unflinching lack of fucks in fights that makes up for whatever ten pounds Jacks might have on him.  They grapple for… well, it feels like forever, in the way that fights always slow down time, but probably is only a few minutes.  They go back and forth in a series of grapples, nothing held back, every ounce of tired muscle straining against each other.  Jacks has him, almost, in a crossbody hold, but Luc gets out of it somehow, reverses it, gets his knee in Jacks’ chest.  He tries to throw him off about five times before he realizes he’s not going to be able to, taps Luc’s thigh three times, and Luc lets go, collapses on the mat next to him, chest heaving.   

Jacks closes his eyes, the emotion of the game suddenly catching up with  him.  He… wants to cry.  When he looks over to Luc again, Luc _is_ crying. Quiet, soundless, but tears trickling down the side of his face.  But his shoulders look looser. His jaw isn’t clenched. He looks. Like Chants. Sad, but himself.  

 

“It fucking sucks, Oli.”

“We lost, Chants, but we fought hard. We did a good job. We played good. _You_ played good.”

“Not good enough.”

“Luc…”

“I should have been able to do more. I should have been able to… There’s some weakness in my play. I gotta. We gotta go over tape and—”

“It’s possible,” Jacks interrupts him, hand over Luc’s mouth, “to commit no mistakes and still lose. That’s not a weakness, Chants. That’s life.”

It shuts Luc up. He stares at Jacks for a few tense seconds and then his shoulder fall back to the mat.  “Who said that? Orr or somebody?”

“Jean-Luc Picard.”

Luc laughs, weakly, rolls his eyes,and rolls over on top of Jacks. “What, he play for the Habs or something?”

Jacks grins up at him. “Yeah, Chants.” Because if Luc’s feeling better enough to chirp him about _Star Trek,_ he’s going to be alright. “Yeah, Chants, he played for the Habs.”

“Alright,” Luc says, sitting on Jacks’ hips, leaning back against his bent knees, “alright, I guess he knows what’s he talking about then. Come on, showers and then food. God, I’m hungry.”

  
  


 

 

They spend a few weeks in Toronto with a strength trainer and a power skating coach in the summer, between their first and second years in the Q.  Jacks is talking to this guy named Jacob that he met in the LGBT forum.  When he tells Luc that he’s going to meet the guy at some get-together one night, Luc stares at him for a long minute, and finally says, “So, you’ve never, like… met this guy before?”

“I’ve been talking to him for months.”

“Yeah, but you’ve never seen him in real life.”

“We’ve snapped.”

“Right,” Luc says, standing up and shoving his feet into his Adidas. “I’m going with you.”

“Chants.” Jacks rolls his eyes. “I’m going to a hook up. What the fuck are you going to do there?”

Luc is grabbing his wallet and his sunglasses.  He rolls his eyes right back.  “Uh, I don’t know, maybe make sure he’s not some weird creep who picks up gay boys off the internet in his creep van and steals their skin? Or mugs them? Or drugs them and—”

“Don’t be fucking stupid, Luc, he’s not… this isn’t like… _Unsolved Mysteries._ He’s not catfishing, I can fucking tell that.”

“Shut up,” Luc says, standing in the doorway of their hotel room, impatient. “You’re my boy. Of course I’ve got your six.”

 

Luc casts an incredulous glance Jacks’ way when they arrive, that’d almost be funny if Jacks didn’t feel so fucking awkward.  Jacob is, in fact, exactly as he looked in all his snaps, an 18 year old college freshman not six months older than Jacks, not the 45 year old basement dweller Luc was afraid of, and he’s welcoming, gives Jacks a hug and half an attempt at a kiss on a cheek and some sort of awkward attempt at a handshake with Luc, gets them drinks.   Luc’s eyebrows are up near the plastic of his snapback’s snap on his forehead as he surveys the people in the room, casts an incredulous look to Jacks but doesn’t say much. Just accepts his Molson and sizes Jacob up, a little obviously, before making his way to the couch.   

“This is a good album,” Jacks says after a few minutes of awkward hovering near Jacob, blushing, looking for some sort of conversation with a kid that… now, face to face, doesn’t seem like he has much in common with. Online… he and Jacob have so much to talk about.  Sharing coming out experiences, family, music, being queer and trying to figure themselves out.  In person, Jacob is… so different looking.  Lucs and Jacks stand out like sore thumbs, taller and thicker, and just… different. Jacks can feel the disturbance in the air Luc is making just by existing here in a t-shirt that says “fer the boys” and has had it’s sleeves removed with a pair of kitchen shears. Luc looks blissfully unconcerned that he’s getting stink-eyed by half the room.

Jacob blushes right back though and says, “Yeah I… uh… I mean… I have the vinyl… in… my room…? Do you wanna…?

“ _Yes,_ ” Jacks breathes out in a rush of relief and Jacob says, “Oh, okay, great, great,” and they hustle off, Jacks giving one last glance at the direction of Luc setting up some sort of awkward vigil on the couch, a lone spot of pastel fuckboyness.

When Jacks comes back out into the living room, Luc’s sitting down, nursing what looks like the same beer he started with, in a heated debate with a girl with green lipstick, wire frame glasses, and an honest to god wolf t-shirt, like one of those gray things on Amazon with the wolf heads howling at the moon and shit.  

“Look, I don’t know what the fuck your problem is,” Luc is saying, all heated indignation, “but everybody fucking knows Suge killed Pac. He owed Pac money.”

“You’re delusional,” the girl in the wolf t-shirt scoffs. “Biggie did it. Why the fuck would they have hit back, if he didn’t do it? You don’t think they knew?”

“Biggie didn’t do shit. That was Suge too.”

“I thought Tupac didn’t die but was living in Cuba,” some kid with a mullet and neon pink crop-top offers.

“Shut the fuck up, Piper!” both Luc and the girl say in unison, their heads whipping around in perfect sync.

“Right,” Jacks says, recognizing an argument Luc is not going to be able to tolerate losing.  “We’re leaving. Jacob. I… uh… I’ll text you or whatever?”

In the street outside of the apartment, Luc throws an arm over Jacks’ shoulders, digs his fingers into the side of Jacks’ neck, holds eye contact for a few long seconds, “He treat you right, Oli?”

Jacks feels his blush in the tips of his ears, “Yeah, Chants. Yeah.”

“Good. His hair was goofy as hell, and his friends were weird as fuck and wrong about everything, but I’m glad.”

On the train ride back to the hotel, Luc informs him, point by point, of every minor fact and minutiae the girl in the t-shirt had gotten incorrect vis a vis Tupac Shakur’s life, work, and untimely demise, knees knocking companionably against Jacks’ and arm thrown over his shoulder the whole way.  “Anyway,” Luc continues as they exit the train and walk the block to the hotel, “everyone knows the FBI killed Easy-E.”  

“Right, sure, sure.”  Jacks has stopped trying to argue with Luc about anything to do with Death Row Records years ago.  

But back in the hotel, Luc throws himself down on the bed next to Jacks, looks at him, and says, “Right. So. Deets, bro.”

“I’m not giving you deets.”

“Fuck that, yes you are,” Luc scoffs, “I’ve given you deets every hook up of my life.”       

 _Whether I wanted them or not,_ Jacks thinks a little meanly, but Luc is continuing, “And this was like your tender and momentous entrance into manhood or whatever. Deets need to be forthcoming.”

Jacks sighs. “It was fine.”

“Fine?   _Fine_. I can go kick his ass right now.”

“It was… better than fine, okay, it was good. Really good. He was sweet.”

Luc hums. Opens his mouth. Closes it.

“What?” Jacks asks, “C’mon, just say it.”

“Nothing, I just… I was going to… I’ve never done anal. I was going to ask if it felt any different but I remembered you didn’t have anything to compare it to, so.”

“Oh,” Jacks can feel his ears flaming. “I uh… we didn’t. We did it the other way.”

For a second Luc looks purely shocked, mouth open, eyes big, but he quickly shifts his face back to neutral. “Oh,” he says, looking suddenly a little awkward. “Oh. I hadn’t thought. I mean, obviously, that’s… cool. I thought you’d…”

“You thought I’d top?”

Luc shrugs awkwardly, “I mean, I don’t know, whatever, you were bigger than him.”

God. Fucking straight boys.  Jacks laughs a little and says, “That’s not how it works, it doesn’t have anything to do with that. I wanted… I mean, I wanted to know what it felt like that way because I probably won’t get a lot of other chances, like over the season or whatever, so…”

Luc chews on his necklace a little, looks away. “Nah, Jacks, I’m going to make sure you get taken care of next season, I'm not gonna let you go without. We’ll need to like… deke around the boys a little, but we’ll work it—”

“No, I mean, even if we try out your crazy hairbrained schemes, it’s still not… I mean, it’s not like a random unexpected hookup type thing, dude. It takes planning.”

There is not a shred of understanding on Chants’ face.

Jacks sighs. “It’s not like a pussy, Luc, assholes serve another purpose most of the time. If you’re planning on bottoming, you have to, like… prepare.”

“Sure,” Luc says, with the face he makes when someone is telling him something he doesn’t understand at all and that he’s already decided he’s going to bluff his way through completely.

Jacks sighs again, “Like with… cleaning… and you know… then like have the time to make sure it’s like… stretched and.”

Luc’s face is doing something hilariously horrified. “Ew,” he says firmly.

“Well, yeah.”

Luc shudders.  “Okay, gross. Why would…”

“It’s worth it,” Jacks says, “believe me, the prostate is a gift. It’s worth it.”

Luc regards him skeptically. “Sure,” he says.

“Believe me, Chants, if a girl ever slips a finger up there during a blowie, you’ll know what I mean.”

“No, thank you,” Luc says, lip curling a little,  “I can’t imagine any fingers anywhere feel better than a mouth on my dick.”

“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,” Jacks sing songs and Luc tries to smother him with a pillow and Jacks pinches Luc’s side, and Luc lets out a squeal that he’ll later deny and tries to grab Jacks’ foot to tickle him, and 5 minutes later, when they eventually call a truce, Luc is breathless and red-faced on the other pillow.   

“But it was… okay… right?” he asks, later when the lights are out and Jacks is almost asleep.  

“Yeah, Chants, it was alright.”

“I mean you didn’t… he didn’t hurt you right? Like, I’ve heard that can hurt sometimes if it's not done right and I…”

“It was fine, Chants, it didn’t hurt.  He went really slow. Like I said, he was sweet.”  

“Okay,” and he doesn’t do a good job of masking the relief in his voice.   He gives Jacks’ ass a brief swat. “Good. You’ve got a lot of skating tomorrow. Can’t have you off your game.”

  
  


The next day, Jacks checks his phone, tired and arms shaking after a brutal upper body medicine ball workout.  There’s a text from Jacob that says _I had a really good time last night. Do you want to get a coffee some time?_

Jacks looks up briefly as Luc walks by on his way to the shower.  Bites his lip.   _I had a good time too_ he texts back _but this summer is just like… crazy busy for me, you know? I’m not going to be in Toronto that much longer._

 _Yeah I get it_ Jacob has texted back after he’s had his own shower, is packing up his gym bag to go back to the hotel.

 

 

 

 

 

Marts throws a big party for everyone when they’re back in town at the start of the season, at the apartment. He’s the new captain, and he makes Luc and Jacks his As. Luc pulls two girls dressed nearly identically, tight jeans, henleys that show off their cleavage, cute toques with dangly pompoms, wanders them around with Jacks in a way that somehow makes it seems like one of them’s with Jacks, before he has the four of them conspicuously leaving for somewhere more private.

He’s not sure what Luc’s told them, it seems like they think they’re covering for him having a girl back home or something, from the way one the girls, Tara, coos about him being romantic, and how lucky his girl must be or something.  The bedroom has a little concrete balcony and it’s still nice out.  Luc kissing the darker haired one while the other one kisses his neck is the last thing Jacks sees before he pulls the curtains closed against the door, and situates himself with his back to the glass, fishing his headphones out of his pockets so he doesn’t have to listen to Luc slow-bone two girls at once to G-Eazy.  

A while later, Jacks’ deep in a Game Grumps marathon when a shoe hits the glass behind his head.  Jacks slides the patio door open to find Luc pulling his boxers on and the room otherwise empty. He gives Jacks a smile and then collapses back on the bed and yawns.  

“Hey,” Jacks says, sitting down next to him. “Thanks for… whatever”

“Yeah,” Chants chirps with a dryness at odds with how completely fucked out he looks, “it’s a pretty big sacrifice on my part. But you know,” he grins at Jacks, a lopsided smile, “gotta sacrifice the body for the team. Gotta take those hits.”   

“Asshole.” Jacks laughs.

“It’s tough work, Jacks. But it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to—”  Jacks cuts him off by trying to smother him with his own t-shirt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 _Hey I think I saw you on TV_ the text comes from Jacob after the Jacks and Luc get interviewed by TSN at the start of Drakkar’s season.  

 

 _You didn’t_  Jacks texts back, suddenly sweating, and dizzy, and heart shaking in his chest.

 

_No, I mean, I’m pretty sure it was you, on TSN.  And that other guy_

 

Jacks is clenching his phone so tight his knuckles are white, breath shallow in his chest. _No. That wasn’t me.  I don’t know what you think you saw, but that wasn’t. Fucking. Me._

 

Jacob’s chat bubble has three little … off and on for over five minutes before finally Jacks gets a _oh dude. Dude. that fucking sucks. I’m sorry man. I didn’t… look don’t worry about it okay, I stg I’d never tell anyone_

 

_I don't know what the fuck you’re talking about, but there’s nothing to tell_

 

_Dude. we’ve known each other for like 2 years now. I would never, okay. I swear to Ewan Mcgregor’s space jesus face._

 

_Okay, well. Not that there’s anything to tell, but if there were to be, thanks._

 

_…_

_…_

_Like for real though, I used to be kind of pissed at you still, but dude, that just … and you’re totally in love with him_

 

_Shut the fuck up Jacob_

 

_And he’s just… and you’re all… like the TV is all “chemistry” and “bromance” and you’re just…_

_Like jfc dude that’s brutal_

 

Jacks sends him back an eggplant emoji

 

 

 

  


He hooks up with Nault in a supply closet in the rink in Rimouski.  Nault drops down to his knees and swallows him down, and the closet is filled with the sounds of his mouth, and Jacks’ breathing, and Luc having a very loud telephone conversation on the other side where he’s leaning against the door.

Jacks comes down Nault’s throat with a muffled grunt and Nault stands up shakily and Jacks says, “I can uh, get you back,” and goes to kneel himself but Nault says “No, fuck, I’m so close, just… hands.” So Jacks gets hand under the band of his boxers and works him fast while on the other side of the door he can hear a muffled voice say, “Hey, Chantsy we’re heading out in 10, where’s your boy?” and Luc say, “He’s in the shitter. Fuck off I’m trying to talk to someone, I’ll get him, we’ll be in the bus in time.”

They take a few seconds to make sure their clothes aren’t too fucked looking and Jacks texts Luc that they’re done, and there’s a little knock on the door, and then it opens. “Coast is clear,” Luc says, easy and smiling.

 

  
“Don’t look so nervous,” Luc says as they’re walking back to the bus.

“I’m always a little worried guys’ll talk, or whatever. Sometimes.”

Luc shrugs, “No one is going to believe him. Or care. Or whatever. Anyway, I gave our hotel number to those chicks that wanted their jerseys signed earlier, everyone thinks you're getting laid at the hotel later tonight, it’s fine.”

 

 

 

**  
  


 

World Juniors the second time around is a different experience.  Except for the winning. There’s still plenty of that.  “Okay, what about him?” Luc asks, pointing at guy in a team Finland track suit.”

Jacks grabs his hand, pulls it down. “Stop pointing for fucks sake, Luc.”  Team Finland guy is staring at them now.  

“How ya doin’?” Luc calls over to him.  

“Shit,” Jacks gives into the giggles that are welling up in his throat.  “Luc, stop.”

“What? I’m trying to—”

“Stopppp,” Jacks laughs and Luc starts laughing too.  When the rest of Team Finland walks by Jacks is laughing too much to breathe, and the confused Finnish muttering only makes it worse.

 

Ivanov, the Russian goalie, looks between Jacks and Luc, who’s loitering by the door, giving Ivanov an encouraging thumbs up.  “Why boyfriend try to set up?” he asks finally.

“He’s not my boyfriend!” Jacks huffs.

Ivanov raises an eyebrow. “Is weird Team Canada thing?”

“It’s not a—" Jacks sighs. “This is stupid, yes it’s just a Team Canada thing. Nevermind. Please forget this ever—”

Ivanov grabs his arm as he’s turning away. “No, wait. I… not… Can be… quiet about? Yes? You won’t tell?”

“I won’t tell,” Jacks agrees.  

  


“Hey Jackson,” Larsson chirps skating by, “you wanna come by tonight after I win and—"

“Not him,” Luc calls out cheerfully, while gleefully checking Larsson against the glass.

Jacks just shakes his head and laughs.  

“Motherfucker,” Larsson hisses, “I didn’t even have the puck, you fucking nutjob.”

“Worth it,” Luc sing songs at him, and lets the ref skate him over to the box.  

  


“ _Ton histoire est une épopée, _

_ Des plus brillants exploits.  _

_ Et ta valeur, de foi trempée _…”   

Luc’s half singing, half shouting, gold medal swinging against his chest in their locker room, along with Cote and a drunk O’Shea who’s warbling “ _Truth north strong and free!!!!!_ ” over and over again over top of their French, off key and grinning until Van Wijk opens another bottle of champagne all over them.  It’s loud in the locker room but Jacks still hears him when Luc whispers “Ton front est ceint de fleurons glorieux,” into Jacks’ ear, kisses his brow on top of his curls.  

  
  
  
  


**

 

 

 

“Nice bruise,” Jacks says, at the tail end of March when he walks into the bedroom. Luc is lying on his back, shirt rucked up, pressing into the bruise on his side gently.  

“It’s not bad.” Luc smiles at him, tired.  “I sort of like them.”

Jacks snorts. “You would,” but sits down next to him, pushes his thumb into the bruise, just a little. Luc closes his eyes.  Jacks keeps his hand over it.  

“I guess it just reminds me that I’m working hard. That I’m… putting in the effort, you know and it feels nice, when something hurts a little and you can still play through it… it feels good.”

“I guess,” Jacks says

“Bels is getting too skinny” Luc says, after a few minutes.

“You’re getting too skinny.”

Luc shrugs, “I skate fast when I’m leaner. I haven’t lost any muscle mass.  And I like the… I like… feeling like I’m running close to the bone, I guess, when things are… It makes me feel like I really want it, you know, like I’m… hungry for it I guess.”

“Luc.”

“Okay.” Luc grins at him, “ I guess you can take me for ice cream. Once.”

“Once a week. Until the end of playoffs.”

“You want ice cream every week until June?” Luc laughs but doesn’t protest.

“You’re relaxed,” Jacks says, squeezing Luc’s side again, “for the end of March.”

“It feels different this year,” Luc says, “I have a good feeling.  My knee feels good.  Girard is looking solid.  Bels is really clicking with us. I have a good feeling.”

 

For a few seconds there’s nothing but quiet breaths and then Luc says, “I’ll probably get all, you know, when playoffs actually start. Sorry if I’m…”

“Unbearable? Bossy? Short tempered? Distant?  A micromanaging—”

“Okay, okay.” Luc laughs, cutting him off. “I get it.”

“Nah,” Jacks says, softly, “even at your most unbearable you’re still pretty great, Luc.”

“Oh, good.” Luc sighs. “You’re pretty great too, Oli.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jaz avec moi - chat with me
> 
> Ton histoire est une épopée, / Des plus brillants exploits. / Et ta valeur, de foi trempée … - Your history is an epic  
> of brilliant deeds And your valour steeped in faith . (Lines from the French version of O Canada
> 
> Ton front est ceint de fleurons glorieux- Glorious deeds circle your borw (O Canada again)


	3. Vegas

**The Draft**

  


In a hotel room in Denver, Luc has been tossing and turning.  Jacks gives up trying to sleep, slides out of bed and climbs into Luc’s.  “Hey,” he says, “can’t sleep?”

“I don’t know.”

“Scared you’ll go second?” he chirps.  

“Nah, Oli.  You… our stats are basically the same.  You deserve to go first as much as I do.  If one of us goes first, it’ll just because that’s the position the Sharks are looking for.”  

Jacks doesn’t know what to do with that.  He knows it’s true, that he _is_ good, really good at hockey, but sometime’s Luc’s hockey seems so brilliant, it seems incomparable.  

“You’re the best center I’ve ever seen, Jacks,” Luc continues, “You’re the best center maybe ever.”

“You’re a little biased.”

“Of course, but it’s still true.”

  


They don’t talk for a while longer, and Jacks thinks Luc has finally gone to sleep, until finally Luc breaks the silence with, “I’m afraid to play hockey without you, afraid we’ll never get to play hockey together again.”  
  
“We will,” and Jacks is suddenly as close to tears as Luc sounds, “I promise we will, Luc, I promise.”   


“All those dumb questions at the combine about playing hockey without each other. Maybe I can, Jacks, but I don’t want to. I know I have to. I know it’s hockey. It know it’s the show. But I don’t want to. Not forever.”

“We will,” Jacks repeats.

“Promise again.”

“I promise,” Jacks says, but it’s a long time before either of them go to sleep.  

  
  


 

**

 

 

  
  


It’d be a lie to say he’d never thought of marrying Luc before.  The fantasy usually went like this:  the ceremony outside, on the beach maybe, Luc and Jacks in matching gray suits, a dog for a ring-bearer. Nice flowers. Vows that were simple and heartfelt. Reception somewhere simple, Luc’s parents’ backyard maybe. A first dance to a song they could both tolerate, matching cake toppers. Running out to their car holding hands under a storm of bird seed and flower petals.  Honeymoon somewhere exotic and sunny where nobody knows anything about hockey.

A fantasy. A silly one, that made no sense. And not one he let himself indulge in very often.

 

No part of that fantasy ever included waking up hungover to hell and back in a Vegas bathtub. Or staring blankly at a marriage certificate found stuffed in Luc’s wallet with _both their names on it_ , in the middle of an IHOP on the strip, and having a big blank space of memory and a sudden sinking sensation of dread.  

 

Jacks’ mind is a steady stream of _ohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuckshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshi_ the whole walk back to the hotel.

But it’s not surprising, really, that the only part of the night he _does_ remember, after things got hazy and drunk and indistinct, is a blurry wavering vision of Luc, eyes fixed on the neon lights of the Chapel, jaw set, saying, “Promise again, Oli. Promise me again.” Taking his hand and pulling him into the doors.  

 

And then he sees the video and has to laugh, because no part of his fantasy of marrying Luc every included… any of that… (no flip-flops, weepy Elvis impersonator, mention of the fucking Calder, or overwhelming cloud of well tequila and jagermeister fumes that he can still somehow smell). But maybe it should have, because in retrospect he can’t really imagine Luc ever marrying anyone any other way.  In the video, Luc’s wearing a tank top that says _I toe dragged your squad_.  He promises to love Jacks “like the best of bros” and Jacks stomach twists at that.  He clasps Jacks hands and stares into his eyes, the two of them swaying drunkenly in a synchronized rhythm, tells Jacks, “You’ll always be the center of my line.”  And Jacks’ stomach drops, heart squeezes in his chest, and throat _aches_.  “Like Fetisov and Larionov,” Luc says, earnest and certain, and Jacks wishes it wasn’t so funny. Wishes it wasn’t so beautiful.  The officiant is wearing Jedi robes and turns their ballcaps backwards before they kiss.   _Luc kisses him_. Sloppy and forceful, with a lot of nose and teeth bumping.   _Luc kisses him_.

“I know we have to be quiet about it or Pat Brisson will actually murder us to death, but part of me just wants to upload it to Twitter right now because it’s too glorious not to share.” Luc laughs, amused and, as far as Jacks can tell, _completely missing the fucking point_.

What? What??   _Share the video_?  They just got _married._ To _each other._ The fuck is Luc talking about? They need to call their fucking lawyer. They need to call… at least five actual adults to come fix their _monumental fuck up_ before the league like… eviscerates them. Maybe ten. Jacks has a sudden horrifying vision of Patrick Burke talking about their video, earnestly, some sort of bizarre league statement that says something like, “The NHL supports all sexual orientations including _dumb rookies who are too young to drink tequila in Vegas_.” Or, worse, the NHLPA issuing some statement like, “The NHL and NHLPA have no official protocol for trades related to marriage,” and then there being some lockout because of it and everyone hating them forever.  

Maybe in 35 years, when Luc’s on his second or third marriage to a different model/actress/singer/instagram celebrity, and Jacks is his “confirmed old bachelor” friend, this will somehow be funny haha instead of...funny shocky panic laugh of _oh shit_. Instead of “wow the universe really knows how to twist the fucking knife” funny.  Maybe.  Maybe, actually, he’d better give it 55 years. Maybe when they’re spending their retirement fishing on the same pier every day, then it will be funny.  And Jacks will be able to say, “Hey, remember that time we were married for a week before we got it annulled, hahah, you know I used to dream about being married to you all the time. I was so totally in love with you. Hahaha.”   

“What?” Luc sits up, outraged, when Jacks brings up _these totally legitimate concerns and practicalities_.  “I swore in front of a monk or priest or whatever that I was going to get a Cup with you. I’m not going back on that. No way.”

 

Oh no.  

 

Oh… oh no.  

 

No.

  


Fuck.  

  


Oh fucking fuck fuck.  Oh fuck his fucking life forever.  

  


Jacks tries to be a good dude. He tries his best. Sure, there are maybe some people he should have treated better.  Honoré probably deserved better.   And Jacks probably should have called his mother more while he was in the Q.  The fake fitspo account he’s been running for the past year and half that’s just quotes of dumb shit Luc said to him like “If you want to play, practice. If you want to win, practice harder” is maybe a little mean, but in his defense _he told Luc about that_ and Luc thought it was hilarious and got great enjoyment out of saying even dumber shit to him like “have you shown them my protein powder power rankings yet??”  One year when he was 14 he forgot to call his grandfather for his birthday.  He was never really good about returning library books.  But still.  Nobody deserves this sort of… torture by cosmic design.  

He tries the only arguments he can make—Luc’s career, etc etc. But he knows it’s pointless.  Of fucking course Luc is never going to undo an actually legally binding document that says something about the Stanley Cup. And now that Luc has found an actual, real, legally and spiritually binding _covenant_ to make _a vow_ to get a Stanley Cup, he’s not going to let it go. Jacks has a sudden, gripping moment of overwhelming melodrama where all he can think of is that dumb fucking Lady of Shalott poem from English class, some chick up in her tower seeing Lancelot and him just _wrecking her entire fucking world._   “The curse has come upon me! cried the Lady of Shalott.”  

Luc had described her, in English class, as “super freakin’ extra.”   Jacks suddenly sympathizes with her.  He’s so fucking doomed.  God fucking damnit.  

Luc wraps himself around him, mutters shit that’s supposed to be comforting like it’s _being outed_ that Jacks is freaking out about right now.  Jacks’ _husband_ is dragging his fingers through his hair and cuddling him in a hotel in Vegas a week after they got drafted into the fucking NHL. That’s like… 90% of everything Jacks has ever wanted in his life, except it’s all _fucked up_ and twisted.  “God you’re such an idiot, fine,” Jacks says into the warm, solid mass of Luc’s shoulder, and gives in.  He’s pretty sure there’s definitely some quote on Luc’s fake fitspo blog about _any win counting_.  Jacks is going to… to take the point.  Enjoy it while he can.  Deal with the fallout later.

  
  
  
  
  


They could get divorced _after_ the Cup, Jacks realizes halfway through the world’s most boring tennis match on sports center.  That would work.  They’ll just win one quick, and then Luc can get on with his future of marrying someone who’s been on the cover of Vogue 5 times, and Jacks can get on with his future of getting the fuck over it.  

“Uh, no. If getting it annulled now would jinx it, then planning now to get it annulled later once we’ve won the Cup is still jinxing it and also cheating.”

Seriously, fuck his fucking life.

  
  


The pool is cool and refreshing, and brings fresh arguments to Jacks’ case.  There’s a very beautiful woman with easily six carats of diamonds on her left hand, sitting with her ankles in the water while her toddler splashes around in the shallow end with the puffy things on his arms.  “Wouldn’t you want to not be married to me so that you can marry the mother of your child?” Jacks points out. Reasonably, he might add.  

“Lots of people have kids without getting married,” Luc answers, because he is an idiot, and an asshole and one day Jacks is going to have to sit down and have the world’s most awkward conversation ever with someone named like… Bijoux or Anastasiya or Francesca and explain that yes he really is married to her boyfriend and no they really can’t get divorced, _sorry_.

“It’s not that I _want_ to be married to him,” Jacks will explain very reasonably over coffee in somewhere terrible like Orange County with equally terrible neighbors, like Tom Brady.  “It’s just that in 1892 Lord Stanley commissioned a silver punch bowl for the Dominion Hockey Challenge, and your boyfriend has some problems with appropriate levels of commitment to sports superstitions and thinks it’s _actual magic_. Terribly sorry, it’s definitely not because I’ve been in love with him since I was seven years old.”  Maybe Francesca will let him live in some sort of in-law suite.  She’ll set him up on dates with guys she knows from the fashion industry who’ll always want to talk to him about photography open houses and real estate in Soho, eat pasta because it reminds them of a dish they had in Milan, not because it’s 4 hours before pre-game.  

  
  
  


Jacks has figured it out. They put something in the fucking water, in Vegas, to make people make _fucking stupid_ decisions.  It’s the only excuse he has for why Chants would ever suggest that they have sex.  With some convoluted reasoning that Jacks is 100% sure follows the same screwy logic Luc used to decide he liked pb&j or that wrapping the tape around his stick 9 times is more pleasing to the gods of hockey than 8 or 10.  It also explains the complete lack of judgement, or willpower Jacks seems to be using in saying yes.  

But really, Jacks defies anyone to say no to Luc when he’s smiling, sly and devilish, with his shirt off, much less someone who has been dreaming about him since he first started having those sort of dreams. “Everything I’ve ever done, whether it was horrible or boring or fun or scary or amazing has been better when I’ve done it with you,” Luc says, and yeah, Jacks dares anyone to resist that.  

 

And because he has had a lot of those dreams, Jacks has spent a lot of time thinking about what it would be like, sex with Luc Chantal. And somehow, in all the endless permeations he imagined, it was never _like this_ .  There was never this much smiling.  Luc, eyes wide with wonder, like hearing Jacks make a noise he’s never heard is a wonder _._  Luc, eyes crinkled with laughter, pleased to be making Jacks gasp. Luc groaning into his neck when Jacks wraps his hand around them. Why didn’t he think it would be like this? God he was an idiot, he didn’t know anything, of course it would be this, _of course_. Of course sex with Luc is as easy as anything else between them.

Luc’s not nervous or shifty, or freaking out in some big gay panic. Luc is self-satisfied, smirking, like he discovered a new trick, perfected a new shoot-out move, won at cards on the bus. Like he _personally invented_ frottage and would like a medal for it and maybe his name on a banner somewhere.

“Bro,” Luc says, arms behind his head, grinning over at the pillow next to him, “I’m a genius and all my ideas are good ideas.”

He rolls around on the floor with Jacks, jerks them off again, makes out with Jacks for long minutes, lying on top of him, grinding down slow, hips rocking in a slow subconscious rhythm, hands in Jacks’ hair, at his neck and jaw, stroking down his sides.  Jacks always knew Luc was good at making out, but it’s… heady, disrupting, to know it for certain, from experience, to have all that intensity focused on him like this.

It makes Jacks reckless enough to get on his knees and take Luc into his mouth in the shower. Luc’s dick is thick, head peeking out of the foreskin, his pubes halfway between trimmed and “natural.”  Jacks swallows Luc down until his nose is buried in them.

“Shit!” Luc gasps, “Jacks, holy fuck!” and then lets his hand fall down to cradle Jacks’ jaw. Jacks swallows again, lets the constriction of his throat grip around Luc’s dick, feels Luc’s hand clench at his jaw. “Fuckkkkkk, Jacks, oh my god.”

He pulls off for air and Luc is looking at him in wonder. “You’re so _good_ at that,” Luc breathes, “Jacks, such a beauty, so good, look at you, Jacks, Oli, come on, Oli, so good at everything, such a beauty.”  Jacks can’t take much more of that, he thinks, without something in his chest exploding, so he sinks back down, hollows his cheeks and _sucks_ and Luc _hisses_ and his knees almost buckle.  

 _There’s no way,_ Jacks thinks, a little wildly, _that Francesca is ever going to suck your dick this good_.  

Jacks feels a spasm go through Luc’s legs, soon, hears Luc say, “Oli, I’m gonna.”  Jacks tries to push closer, get Luc’s dick even deeper, even as Luc tries to pull out.  He gets it all over his face, including his eye.  

“Tabernak, Jacks, c’mere,” Luc says and tries to push him under the spray of the water, “shit, Jacks, I was trying not to choke you.”

Jacks squints at him with his one good eye. “I was just going to swallow, idiot.”

“Let me… dude… here,” Luc says, wraps his fist around Jacks’ dick, kisses the side of his face, his mouth, his neck, strokes him long and slow.  “Come on, Jacks. Come on, mon chum, so good, such a beauty, you’re the fucking best, Oli.”

  
  
  
  


“Seriously,” Luc says that night, lying next to Jacks in the bed later that night. “All my ideas are the best ideas. Why didn’t we think of this sooner?”

Jacks wraps his arm around him tighter. “Pretty sure we weren’t legally _allowed_ to get married until a few months ago, what with the whole turning 18 thing.”

“That’s dumb.” Luc yawns. “We should have gotten married forever ago.”

Jacks holds him tighter, and tells himself that he’s going to count each day he gets this as an added bonus to an already epic friendship, an unexpected joy, let himself enjoy it, and let himself let Luc go when it’s time to go back to normal.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me at superstitionhockey on tumblr!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [everything is dangerous when it's just the two of us](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11255634) by [dangercupcake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dangercupcake/pseuds/dangercupcake)
  * [[Podfic] Other People](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12435315) by [ExtraTherese](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExtraTherese/pseuds/ExtraTherese)




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